Canada needs to get serious about digital sovereignty and scrapping the DST won't help
In Europe, the revelation that American tech products could be used as a point of leverage sent governments scrambling to review their exposure, and to expand their investments into potential domestic alternatives that could better guarantee national security. Canada needs to chart a similar course, and prioritize diversifying away from our reliance on American tech. Some of this work may be done in collaboration with existing efforts among European partners, but there is no reason why Canada should not be leading in the development of innovative alternatives to the present American-dominated ecosystem. In particular, the past year has shown a growing eagerness among consumers to embrace alternatives to the Big Tech status quo, as evidenced by the rapid growth of users of alternative social media platforms such as Mastodon, Bluesky and Pixelfed. Canada should invest in creative solutions to break out of the existing platform-dominated paradigm and empower domestic champions such as the newly launched Gander Social. In particular, decentralized offerings present an intriguing alternative to empower users, and could deliver a new paradigm of digital communications. The government could lead the way by beginning to migrate its own digital presence away from American-dominated tech.
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However, the ability for new national champions to thrive in the tech space depends on a market that provides fair opportunities to new entrants. This means a need for strong enforcement of competition rules. Canada could also follow Europe's lead through rules around adversarial interoperability, which requires companies to make sure their products interface smoothly with their competitors, and minimizes the cost to consumers of switching. Canada could also consider stronger privacy enforcement, and rules that demand greater transparency and accountability from large online platforms about the decisions they make.
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None of this will be easy, and much of it is likely to draw the ire of a U.S. administration that has developed an astonishingly cozy relationship with the same Silicon Valley titans who just a few years ago decried Donald Trump as too dangerous to even give an account to. The DST, which ensures that large tech companies pay their fair share of taxes, should be an important part of Canada's strategy for digital self-reliance, by drawing revenue from the biggest players to seed new alternative information institutions. While it is difficult to backseat drive officials faced with the difficult and delicate task of negotiating with the Trump administration, the speed with which Canada rolled over in cancelling the DST, while apparently getting nothing concrete in return, is a troubling sign. Canada needs a stable and equitable trade relationship with the U.S., but not at the cost of our sovereignty.
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