Post Tagged with: "digital sovereignty"

Ursula von der Leyen, Mark Carney and António Costa, © European Union, 2026, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Carney_at_the_20th_EU-Canada_Summit_-_2025_-_P067331-991490_(cropped).jpg

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 281: Mikolaj Barczentewicz on Europe’s Digital Sovereignty Push, CADA, and the Implications for Canada

Canada’s pivot to Europe took another step at last week’s Canada-EU summit in Montreal, where the two sides launched what they call an “Alliance for the Future.” The announcements ranged from critical minerals and firefighting aircraft to supercomputing and payment systems. The digital commitments received less attention, but they raise many of the same sovereignty questions that have dominated the Canada-U.S. relationship this year. Indeed, the leaders committed to reciprocal access to each other’s cloud and AI markets and concluded Canada’s first Digital Trade Agreement.

Mikołaj Barczentewicz is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Surrey, where he is research director of the Surrey Law and Technology Hub, and a Senior Scholar at the International Center for Law & Economics. His recent work has examined how the EU has addressed cloud and AI policy and what it means for its allies. He joins me on the Law Bytes podcast to discuss Europe’s digital sovereignty push, its proposed Cloud and AI Development Act, and the implications for Canada.

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November 2, 2026 — 1 comment — Podcasts
BalticServers_data_center by BalticServers.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 279: My Keynote on Digital Sovereignty: Control, Choice, and Connection

The Law Bytes podcast returns after a brief hiatus in late summer and early fall by turning to the debate on data and digital sovereignty. Last week, I was pleased to deliver the dinner keynote speech at the NREN Assembly, an annual gathering hosted by CANARIE that brings together staff and leadership from CANARIE and all thirteen provincial and territorial partners of Canada’s National Research and Education Network. With their kind permission, this week’s episode features the keynote in full, titled Digital Sovereignty: Control, Choice, and Connection.

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October 19, 2026 — 0 comments — Podcasts
EP Plenary session - September 2026 - Formal sitting with Mark CARNEY, Canadian Prime Minister © European Union, European Parliament , via Wikimedia Commons

What If the U.S. Demanded This? The Cloud Provider Conditions Behind Canada’s EU Digital Pivot

Given concerns about what the U.S. envisioned for “digital trade alignment,” consider the possibility that the package required Canada to keep its cloud market open to U.S. companies, gave them equivalent access to government procurement, and restricted the implementation of a “Buy Canadian” approach to sovereign cloud. The U.S. would also set the standard for Canadian privacy law, Canadian law enforcement and security agencies would not wield powers over cloud providers that conflict with U.S. rules on government access to data, and the U.S. could suspend or revoke the deal if it concluded that Canada no longer met its standards. In return, the deal would allow Canadian companies to compete for sensitive U.S. government cloud contracts on the condition that the data centres, the data and the staff were U.S. based, staff were U.S. citizens, and the Canadian government was restricted from accessing the data in the U.S.

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October 5, 2026 — 11 comments — News
Mark_Carney_with_Ursula_von_der_Leyen by European Union, 2026, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elbows Up With Europe Too: Why Canada’s Pivot to the EU Raises the Same Digital Sovereignty Questions as the U.S.

Canada’s pivot to Europe continues to accelerate with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to the European Parliament today, the call for Canada to become the first “associate member” of the EU, negotiations on a Canada-EU Digital Trade Agreement launched earlier this year that could conclude this fall, and an upcoming summit that could bring even further measures. In the wake of the collapse of trade talks between Canada and the U.S., closer relations with the EU are an obvious alternative. While U.S. demands on digital policy (notably the cancellation of the DST and streaming payments) have attracted some criticism in Canada, a European shift is likely to substitute one pressure point for another, with some of the same questions about Canadian digital sovereignty in play. Indeed, the EU has exported its regulatory standards around the world for decades, and trading U.S. “digital trade alignment” for a European digital regulatory model will still raise many of the same “elbows up” questions about whether Canada gets to set its own digital policies.

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September 17, 2026 — 2 comments — News
Flower shop on Google Maps by Lars Ploughmann https://flic.kr/p/oEQrX CC BY-SA 2.0

Be Careful What You Wish For: Why Asking Google Maps to Defy the U.S. on Lake Ontario Would Undermine Canadian Digital Sovereignty

I woke up early on Monday morning for 14 interviews focused on digital sovereignty on CBC Radio stations across the country (here’s the Manitoba version). Most opened the discussion by asking what digital sovereignty means. My answer was that it is about choice: the ability of Canadians to choose the digital services they use and the ability to ensure that Canadian law applies to those services here. Several hosts then cited the emerging Google Maps controversy, in which U.S. users now see “Lake America” while Canadians continue to see “Lake Ontario”. The reference made sense in the moment, but on reflection, I don’t think the mapping case is an example of digital sovereignty gone wrong. This may not be a popular opinion, but the incident demonstrates the opposite since Canadian rules are being respected domestically and large Internet platforms are refraining from using their power to decide which rules to follow.

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September 2, 2026 — 10 comments — News
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