Canada Should Build Public Cloud Infrastructure Rather Than Relying on U.S. Tech Giants ⇥ policyalternatives.ca

Paris Marx, in an article for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a progressive think tank:

As [Prime Minister Mark] Carney looks to reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, we can’t ignore the extent of our technological dependence — and the cloud is a great place to start. Carney’s statement during the election suggested he would look to Canadian companies to supply more of the computation and storage needs of the federal government, but he should be far more ambitious.

Instead of simply encouraging the buildout of a private Canadian cloud, the government should invest in the expansion of a public cloud — built and run by a Crown corporation with public financing to serve government needs, but potentially to expand beyond that too. The government already has data centres of its own, but in recent decades it’s more often looked to the private sector to supply more of its computational needs instead of developing in-house capacities as it did with older forms of information technology.

This would be a hard sell to the public, but it is a very good idea; similarly, we should not cede our physical communications system to private businesses. This seems unlikely under Carney, who is too busy embracing neoliberal fiscal positions to take on such a bold project, but it is the kind of big idea we need to counter U.S. tech dependence.