Buy Canadian is going way beyond the grocery cart.
Driving the news: AI Minister Evan Solomon said that Ottawa is looking to expand its Buy Canadian policies to tech infrastructure, and is cooking up new rules that could require firms receiving public funding to spend domestically on AI and digital services wherever possible.
- The policy would mirror initiatives asking battery plants with federal financing to use Canadian steel and aluminium, and federal agencies to prioritize domestic firms.
- The federal budget earmarked $925.6 million to boost domestic AI computing capacity, and set aside $105.9 million to devise and implement a new domestic purchasing policy.
Why it matters: Canada relies heavily on U.S. giants for infrastructure, raising concerns about control of Canadian data. While complete digital sovereignty is “impossible,” at least per the Treasury Board, this could be a step towards building more capacity.
- Decoupling from U.S. tech won’t be easy. For example, if the feds themselves were to drop Amazon Web Services, it would take up to three years of full-time work to pull it off.
What’s next: The big beneficiaries of this push will likely be telcos. Bell is in the process of building out so-called superclusters of data centres, while Telus opened what it billed as “Canada’s first fully sovereign AI factory” in September.—QH