Data Sovereignty: Charting Canda’s Digital Future

Name: Data Sovereignty: Charting Canda’s Digital Future (English version)
SKU: W50186

Erik Bohlin, Mansi Sethi, Bianca Bhardwaj

Product #:W50186

Supplier:Ivey

Discipline:Economics & Public Policy, Strategy

Setting:Canada, 2025

Details:Case (PDF) • 14 pages • 2026-06-07

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Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) is advising the cabinet amid growing reliance on foreign hyperscale cloud providers. Policies have accelerated cloud adoption and reshaped government IT, while concentrating critical workloads in a small number of US-based platforms. At the same time, extraterritorial laws, procurement controversies, and trade and fiscal constraints complicate efforts to assert Canadian control over sensitive data. The case explores the strategic and policy tensions involved in pursuing data sovereignty, and the implications of different approaches for Canada’s digital resilience, economic autonomy, and role in an increasingly contested global digital landscape.

Learning Objectives

This case can be used in digital strategy and policy, public management/policy in the digital economy, or global business and government courses at the undergraduate or graduate level.

This case enables students to do the following:

Understand the concept of digital sovereignty and how it shapes national policy priorities in data governance, security, and economic competitiveness.
Analyze Canada’s evolving approach from cloud first to cloud smart, including the institutional roles, fiscal constraints, and policy trade-offs involved.
Evaluate the advantages and limitations of the three proposed policy levers in strengthening Canada’s control over critical digital assets.
Debate how Canada should balance efficiency, innovation, and sovereignty in sequencing or combining these levers to achieve long-term digital resilience.