Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Canada Wants Sovereign AI. The Cloud Says Otherwise
June 3, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Regulation And Policy
Cloud Concentration, Compute Access, and AI Sovereignty
On June 2, 2026, the Canadian Anti Monopoly Project released Parting Clouds: Creating A Competitive Marketplace For Compute that says three American companies control 85% of Canada's public cloud market. Canada wants sovereign AI. It's a gap that Ottawa needs to address before it commits more public money to AI infrastructure.
Globally, those same three firms Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, hold about 66% of the public cloud market. AI runs on compute, but most firms access that compute through cloud platforms. The more difficult it becomes to move data, workloads, and AI services between providers, the more dependent organizations become on a small number of platforms.
Compute Is Capacity. Cloud Is Control.
Compute means the physical capacity. Think data centres, chips, GPUs, servers, storage, power, cooling, and networks. Cloud is the commercial aspect that packages that capacity into services like APIs, software tools, security controls, and platform ecosystems.
Canada can fund more compute and still leave firms locked into the same cloud stacks. That concern connects to NCFA’s earlier analysis of Canada’s AI capital flight problem, where public AI investment doesn't always translate into long term domestic value especially if customers cannot move their data, workloads, models, and services without high technical and financial costs.
The CAMP report makes that point clearly. The goal isn't simply Canadian ownership. The goal is a market where customers can switch providers without rebuilding core systems. Most Canadian firms cannot replace that stack overnight.
Federal spending tells the same story. From 2019 to 2020 through 2022 to 2023, Shared Services Canada spent $310.4M on cloud services. The report says 66% went to Microsoft, 16% to Amazon, 14% to Salesforce, and 4% to other providers.
AI Deepens Cloud Lock In
Cloud concentration already creates switching barriers through proprietary services, opaque pricing, and weak interoperability.
AI makes those barriers harder to manage. A fraud model, compliance agent, lending workflow, or payment risk tool can become tied to a provider’s data services, model tools, security layer, and deployment environment.
Moving clouds then means more than moving storage. It can mean rebuilding how the product works.
Five firms control about 75% of global AI compute power, with Google alone controlling about 31%. That concentration shows why AI sovereignty is not only about funding more capacity. It's also about keeping customers mobile before AI markets harden around the same platforms.
Domestic Monopolies Are Still Monopolies
The name of this section is the report's strongest warning and it should affect Ottawa's strategy.
More Canadian data centres can help. Domestic compute can support sensitive workloads, national resilience, and local AI capacity. Ottawa has already backed 44 Canadian AI compute projects, but if public funding only creates protected local gatekeepers, Canada may replace one dependency with another.
The better goal is customer mobility. Can a Canadian fintech move workloads from one provider to another? Can a public agency compare cloud pricing easily? Can a startup use AI tools without being trapped inside one ecosystem? Can sensitive workloads use Canadian infrastructure without sacrificing portability?
What Ottawa Should Do
Ottawa should fund infrastructure, but also change the market around portability, interoperability, transparent pricing, and competition.
The CAMP report recommends using public procurement to require portable data, interoperable services, and common technical standards. It also calls for closer scrutiny of egress fees, bundling, tying, discriminatory licensing, cloud credits, and acquisitions that absorb Canadian talent and intellectual property.
See: AI Data Centres Test B.C.’s Clean Power Limits
This approach has tradeoffs. Procurement can move faster than legislation, but it needs technical discipline. Competition enforcement can target lock in, but cases take time. Interoperability can lower switching costs, but it will not instantly match the full global scale of AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Domestic infrastructure can improve resilience, but only if it avoids new lock in.
The Questions Ottawa Should Answer
Will Canada measure AI sovereignty by domestic capacity, or by real customer choice?
Will public funding require portability, open standards, and transparent pricing?
Will Canadian fintechs and AI startups be able to move workloads across providers without rewriting core systems?
Will the strategy treat cloud concentration as a competition issue, not only an innovation issue?
Will Canada build a market where providers compete on price, performance, trust, and service quality, or one where customers stay trapped because switching costs are too high?
Talking Point
If a Canadian fintech cannot realistically move its AI stack from one provider to another, who holds the leverage?
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