Opinion: Canada Post should be given a mandate to protect our digital sovereignty

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Moreover, a modicum of sovereign compute contributes exactly zero to national sovereignty if the data used to train models, generate insights and create intellectual property remains governed through infrastructure that Canada does not control.

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Canada therefore needs a sovereign digital spine, and our history tells us how this can be done: empower a Crown corporation to build it. This will ensure that the spine is sovereign because a Crown corporation answers only to the Crown.

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The good news is that Canada does not face any machinery of government issues in moving expeditiously on this file — it already has a Crown corporation with a legislative mandate squarely focused on providing the services that are bundled in that digital spine: Canada Post.

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Postal service is a constitutional responsibility of the federal government, and for generations Canada Post has provided secure communications across an enormous country, including to communities where purely commercial incentives would never have produced universal service. It already helps sustain the connective tissue of Canadian democracy.

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In the digital age, Canada Post should be given a new public-purpose function to build and hold the foundational infrastructure through which Canadian public institutions, and eventually businesses and citizens, securely store and exchange data under Canadian governance, reflecting Canadian values and norms, and under Canadian law enacted by a democratically elected Canadian Parliament.

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Canada Post does not answer to Washington, to its lobbyists or those who populate Silicon Valley and fancy themselves to be philosopher kings.

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This proposal does not require Canada Post to become a software company, to build data centres itself or to employ thousands of programmers. Canada Post would hold the infrastructure and contracting authority as a national public asset. Private firms would competitively supply cloud services, software, cybersecurity, AI tools and other technical capabilities. An independent governance structure would establish rules governing access, interoperability, privacy and use.

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Universities provide an everyday analogy. A university owns and governs its campus, but it does not manufacture the elevators, operate every coffee shop or perform every electrical repair itself. It establishes the rules and standards under which private providers operate. Digital sovereignty should work similarly.

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For highly sensitive assets, with public health data being the obvious example, neither a technology company nor the government of the day should enjoy unfettered discretion over how citizens’ data is used. A multilayered governance model should place ultimate stewardship under transparent and democratically accountable principles.

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Provincial health data could provide an ideal first use case. The data would not need to be centralized, nor would existing hospital systems need to be replaced. Institutions could retain their systems while connecting through trusted standards governing secure, authorized exchange. That would allow Canada to test the model in one of the most demanding data environments before scaling it more broadly.

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As governments, universities, hospitals and businesses already pay substantial recurring fees to foreign cloud and platform providers, this test case would not entail out-of-pocket costs, beyond any charges associated with switching services.

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Existing server capacity could be leased initially, private software application suppliers selected competitively and the system expanded as customers join it. This test case consequently anticipates a model that could approach cost neutrality as usage grows.