Make Canadian Data Sovereignty Mean Canadian Control
Residents of Scarborough Southwest
A server being physically located in Canada does not necessarily mean Canadians control it.
Canada is investing public money in the computing infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence and increasingly describing that infrastructure as “sovereign.”
But real sovereignty also depends on who controls the company, who can administer the systems, who holds the encryption keys, what foreign laws apply and whether people outside Canada can access Canadian information.
Data residency is not the same as data sovereignty.
If public money and sensitive government information are going to be tied to sovereign Canadian infrastructure, Canadians deserve a clear and enforceable standard for what “sovereign” actually means.
Petition by
To:
Residents of Scarborough Southwest
From:
[Your Name]
We, the undersigned, call on the Government of Canada to establish clear and enforceable standards for sovereign Canadian AI and computing infrastructure.
We ask the federal government to:
distinguish infrastructure that is merely Canada-resident from infrastructure that is genuinely Canada-controlled or Canada-sovereign;
establish standards addressing jurisdiction, administrative control, encryption-key custody, foreign access, corporate ownership and control;
require those standards for federal AI-infrastructure funding, sensitive government-data hosting and preferential federal procurement;
create transparent certification or classification standards so Canadians can understand the level of Canadian control involved; and
establish meaningful consequences where public funding, contracts or certification are obtained through materially false claims about Canadian sovereignty.
If Canadian sovereignty is going to be used to justify public investment in major digital infrastructure, genuine Canadian control should be required.
We urge the Government of Canada to make those standards enforceable through its funding, procurement and contracting powers.