Discussion Paper | Confronting Canada's Gatekeeper Crisis

June 12, 2025 – Canada’s relationship with the United States has been upended. The opening months of the second Trump administration have brought tariffs, threats to unravel national security partnerships, and a fixation on the potential of Canada as the 51st state. At the same time, the largest American technology firms are forging closer ties to the new administration and tightening their grip on global digital markets.

These twin shifts mean the companies that mediate how Canadians communicate, understand the world around us, and engage in commerce can no longer be treated as benign commercial partners. Across tariff negotiation, censorship worries, and our future as an independent nation, Canada’s dependence on the infrastructure of U.S. tech companies is now a point of strategic vulnerability.

In a new discussion paper, CAMP provides an overview of the consolidated landscape in three key areas of digital infrastructure – online advertising, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence – and poses four questions to begin charting a new course towards durable digital sovereignty:

• How can Canada guarantee reliable, sovereign access to critical digital infrastructure, when that infrastructure is currently the domain of a tight oligopoly of American firms?
• What new or strengthened policy tools are needed to rein in the power of digital gatekeepers, and how can Canada ensure those policies have teeth?
• What mix of public investment, industrial policy, and procurement strategy is needed to foster domestic or allied alternatives to American platforms in important digital markets?
• How should Canada collaborate with like-minded countries to resist pressure to weaken regulation of digital gatekeepers and present a united front on shared policy goals?

Read the full discussion paper here