Canada Wants Digital Sovereignty. Bill C-22 Pulls the Other Way
Encryption, lawful access, and the hidden contradiction in Canada’s digital sovereignty strategy
Canada cannot build digital sovereignty by making Canadian infrastructure less trustworthy.
A country that wants more domestic cloud capacity, more domestic software companies, more domestic AI infrastructure, and more control over its digital future needs people to trust the systems built here.
Bill C-22 exposes the tension underneath that ambition.
The government describes the bill in familiar language. Modernization. Public safety. Lawful access. Technical assistance. A better framework for police and intelligence agencies dealing with modern digital systems.
A huge amount of ordinary digital life depends on strong encryption, even when we do not think about it.