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It’s a new, modern form of sovereignty: digital sovereignty. It’s the notion that states should exert control over parts of the rapidly expanding digital economy that increasingly forms a central part of Canadians’ lives, including computers and smartphones, the apps that run on them, and the data that they collect.��

This was a major concern in the wake of the 2019 Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which was harvested from Facebook without their consent. Now, it’s even more true in the age of AI, the technology which gets “trained” on existing information, and is thus always hungry for more data. Concerns have already been raised that Canadians’ health-care data stored on U.S.-owned servers could be used to AI algorithms.��

But Canada’s government appears content to allow our digital lives to be bought and sold by an unaccountable class of foreign tech overlords.

“Empires once built railways. Now they build algorithms,” signatory Barry Appleton, co-director of the New York Law School’s Center for International Law, told the Globe and Mail.��

“If Canada cannot govern the code that governs Canadians, then we are no longer a sovereign democracy. We will be tenants in Trump’s regime.”

Canada’s Minister of AI and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon, however, has other plans. So far Solomon has served as little more than an AI evangelist, the technology to the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press.��

He boasted in a �Ѳ������𲹲�’s interview that he used Google’s NotebookLM to brief him on previous government legislation. When reporter David Reely at The Logic followed the same steps on the same law, he found that it got two out of three times.

Solomon has also dismissed criticisms of Canada’s rush to secure foreign AI investment, including from the U.S., as well as repressive theocracies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as a

As an example of the Canadian government’s commitment to supporting AI sovereignty, Solomon cited an to give upwards of $240 million to ɫɫ��-based company Cohere to build a data centre in Cambridge, Ont. But it was that Cohere wasn’t in fact building the data centre. That would be done by New Jersey-based firm CoreWeave, which Cohere would pay to access its technology.��

To intellectual property lawyer Jim Hinton, this means the government’s $240-million investment would be “captured by a U.S. firm but paid for by Canadians.”

In August, the feds doubled down on their commitment to Cohere by signing an with the company “to enhance operations within the public service and to build out Canada’s commercial capabilities in using and exporting AI.”

This is all the more concerning given that Cohere is a partner of Palantir, a major U.S. military and intelligence contractor that is in the midst of an AI platform to assist immigration authorities in surveilling and deporting non-citizens.

According to at TechCrunch, Cohere’s AI models are already being accessed by unnamed Palantir customers.��

Cohere wouldn’t comment when asked by TechCrunch whether its models are being used for defence or intelligence purposes. But even if they aren’t, the reality that Palantir clients can access Cohere’s AI models doesn’t bode well for Canadian digital sovereignty.��

Showering Canadian-owned tech companies with public cash isn’t enough. There needs to be a stronger regulatory framework to protect Canadians’ data from foreign exploitation.��

But in order to introduce one, the federal government will first have to abandon the acquiescence to the private sector that is driving its tech boosterism.��

The AI minister’s public comments suggest there’s no apparent appetite to change course.