Front Burner - What Big Tech wants out of the trade war

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

When trade talks between Canada and the U.S. broke down last week, one of the issues that reportedly came up was Canadian streaming rules that require platforms like Netflix to make Canadian and French-language content easier to find in Canada. Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada would not compromise on protecting French culture. But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said language was never the issue – rather "past discriminatory laws that target U.S. streaming companies." Vass Bednar is the managing director of the Canadian Shield Institute, and she’s spent years studying how American tech companies shape Canadian policy. She unpacks what Big Tech wants out of these trade talks – and what this latest rupture means for Canada’s digital sovereignty.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit:   https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. 15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CVC's On Cover and the Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word, leave me alone.

The Mile Zero Murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Last week, when everyone was watching and wondering what could be in this supposed trade deal between Canada and the U.S., there were a few things that caught the eye of those of us who care a lot about big tech. One was the U.S. trade representatives' comments that Canada and the U.S. had reached digital trade alignment, whatever that meant. Another was reporting that publisher should be prepared for the axing of the Online News Act. And then, after negotiations fell apart, it became clear that one of the sticking points was American objections to streaming rules that would require platforms like Netflix to surface Canadian content, including French language content, in Canada.

We were not prepared to accept any compromise on our sovereignty, protection of the French language, and our culture. Today, was the U.S. really putting up a fight about French TV shows? Or was this really about what big tech wants from Canada? Vas Bednar has spent years studying how American tech companies shaped Canadian policy. She is the managing director of the Canadian Shield Institute, and she joins me now. Bass, great to have you on. As always, thank you for making the time. Thanks for having me.

So let's start with this spat over the streaming lives. that seemed to be one of the last minute additions from the Trump administration that derailed these talks, Mark Carney said Canada wouldn't compromise on protecting the French language. But the reporting that's come out this week seems to suggest this wasn't necessarily about language or culture head-on, but more about an attempt to remove regulations. Tech companies simply do not want to follow. And I just talk to me a little bit more about what you think this fight was about. I mean, I think the fight's about our sovereignty.

I think our fights about the ability to regulate that digital economy in the way that reflects our values. And that's what makes French, French language, cultural content, cultural content that's Canadian writ large, kind of zeitgeisty in that way. It's almost, yeah, less about what the policy is itself and a little bit more about just our ability to govern the economy that we have. You know, leading up to the talks falling apart, we did see some reporting in the Toronto Star from Justin Ling that Ottawa was getting ready to kill the Online News Act, which requires large platforms to compensate news publishers for sharing their content. This was also something big tech didn't like. People might also remember that during negotiations last year, Mark Carney acts the digital services tax as a concession to Trump. Like, given that the Canadian government seemed willing to concede on other. digital policies. Why do you think these rules around streaming seem to be a red line for them

on Friday? Well, I think the U.S. is reframing accountability in the digital world as it as discrimination against American companies. It felt, you know, reporting that I saw in commentary, there was a sense of surprise towards the end of last week around, you know, even Justin's reporting with the Online News Act. But again, this was very clearly telegraphed, literally published by the U.S., foreshadowed as a quote-unquote foreign trade barrier. And if you take a look at that report and you know I have, you know it stresses me out, it gets a little bit gnarly. The report also flagged that shared services Canada, so part of the federal government, published a request for information, right, a bid, seeking feedback on a proposal for the government's purchase of

cloud services that would require that all data be processed, transmitted, and stored exclusively in Canada. Okay? So this isn't Canada saying we're outlawing the hyperscalers, you know, Amazon Web Services cannot be here providing cloud services. This is a new policy framework for storing government data that we're signaling we want to start doing a more effective job with. And it is being kind of shot down or flagged as we don't like what you're doing. We don't think you should do that. Right. Right. And just coming back squarely to the

streaming stuff, you know, Canada, I guess my point is Canada did seem willing to concede on these other things, potentially the Online News Act, certainly the digital service attack. Why do you think that the streaming issue became a red line for Carney. Was it an accumulation of demands from the U.S. on big tech regulation? Or was it because cultural and Quebec language rights is a kind of domestic political third rail?

Ooh, third rail. I mean, look, we have these cultural content provisions because of sovereignty fights in the past. Because we were concerned about foreign dominance of our airways and our loss or potential lack of ability to hold on to subsets of our culture and our stories. So the idea that it would be up for grabs, you know, in this digital context, in this trade war, is frankly preposterous. I think the other

element, you know, as to why hypothetically would our federal government be willing to cede more ground on digital or on technology regulation? Well, probably because all of this net new digital policy is a product of Kuzma 1.0, which sucks for the digital economy. We agreed, oh, we're not going to audit algorithms. That can stay a black box. You know, we'll never mandate data residency. You know, source code stays yours. We basically enshrined their section 230, which is you can't hold platforms accountable for what's on them. And that all sort of answers the question, well, why do we have these laws that just feel like they ask big tech firms? very nicely to comply, because that's kind of all we can do outside of the courts or outside of the

safety lens that you're seeing brought forward with the newer version of the Online Harm's Act. You just mentioned how Kizma 1.0 sucked. That's the official policy term sucked. Tell me more about why you think what happened in 2018 was a mistake and why it is hamstringed our ability to regulate American tech companies here in Canada. Well, it's kind of the downward trend of tech optimism when that agreement was being signed. So some people and constituencies were starting to raise concerns about those digital elements, but it wasn't as popular or as populist at the time. The other fundamental issue with digital concerns is that they lack the economic geography that other more familiar issues have naturally tended towards.

So in terms of core constituencies that are political, digital doesn't really have that. And Kuzma, whatever that older version was or the current working version, it basically treats data, cloud infrastructure, software and platforms as, things that should move totally freely across borders and also doesn't take the lens that they are strategic infrastructure over which a place like Canada might legitimately want more control. So we cannot say that as a condition of doing business, a U.S. company would need to locate or use, you know, have a data center here, keep data here. our data and information is also subject to additional laws in the U.S.

That can mean our information can be handed over to a government authority quite quickly. And again, on source code and algorithms, we can't require a U.S. firm to hand over that source code. So when we're trying to understand things like hallucinations and influence and depression and even suicide and murder that we've seen kind of facilitated, through conversations with chatbots, we are already constrained. We cannot say, explain this in greater detail to us or kind of let us look under that, for lack of a better phrase. Right. We can't say that to Open AI, is what you're saying.

No, I mean, we can ask very nicely, the Canadian way, or we can, again, potentially through court cases. We are seeing really interesting court cases primarily in the U.S. around sort of social media accountability. Meta has reached a settlement in a landmark social media trial. 29 states accused the social media giant of designing its apps to get children addicted and misleading users about their safety. Meta denies the allegations, but as part of the agreement, the social media giant says it will put in place a number of protections for teens, including a two-hour daily time limit on its apps, which will be disabled overnight. And that's sort of why I'm pointing to the courts have been kind of a better tool.

But not a lot of us were paying attention at this time. The platform, that platform liability question wasn't as big a question. And when you think about, I mean, even using that word big feels kind of funny because in the years since Kuzma, like large technology firms have only become not only significantly larger and more powerful, but the quality of those experiences that we're having has also really gone down. and become a source of anger and frustration, which I think elevates expectations of, hey, are we holding this accountable? Like, what happens when you get the wrong information kind of all the time from a search engine or something like that? The mood and the attitude has changed towards technology firms. But again, big tech probably got most of what they wanted in that original deal. And now we're in a universe where, you know, they're pushing for more grants.

and pushing us for us to, again, give up on policy initiatives, which means that our ability to exercise that sovereignty is being treated as something that should just be traded away. Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. 15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains.

I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's Uncover and the Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word. Leave me alone. The Mile Zero murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. You have written about Big Tech's QSmo wish list this time around. A number of tech lobbying firms have made public submissions to U.S. trade officials. So this isn't like a hypothetical conversation. Just tell me more about what is on that list and what it is that, you know, they're trying to get from Canada.

Yes, I mean, I love to use information that's hiding in plain sight. And it is worth reminding these desires. It's not speculative, right? Our digital sovereignty has been flagged as a trade irritant. And when I look at these groups, and some of them are Canadian, but big tech firms are part of their representation. So we included in that analysis. We see that defensive posturing, right, protect cross-border data flows, continue to prohibit data localization requirements, strengthen the existing protections against disclosure of source code and AI model weights, right? Continue to block us from understanding these systems that control.

the information that we see, how we communicate with each other. The U.S. does not like our also a new policy or by Canadian policy, our efforts to procure more often from capital C Canadian firms and, you know, pushing back against Canadian cultural news and streaming policy, kind of exactly what we've seen this summer. Right, right. Fair for me to say it's largely a lot of are the same stuff we gave up the first time around? Well, we gave up our ability to kind of comprehensively or more effectively regulate the digital economy, which I'm often using as being synonymous with big tech. You know, when Trump was

sworn in and he was at the height of his popularity, all of the large American tech firm's CEOs were in that photo opportunity with him. Now his popularity is different, but that doesn't mean that the U.S. administration is not aligned with some of the, frankly, largest companies in the entire world. You know, we interviewed former conservative leader, Aaron O'Toole, a few days ago, who is now a member of Carney's Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations. And I actually just want to play you a clip where he talks about what he thinks the U.S. wants. Where the Americans appear to be now is also trying to dictate everything about the new economy. the digital economy. They want us to be subservient on regulation with respect to AI or to cloud

computing. The Europeans are going a different way, and the Americans don't want us to follow a more balanced and independent regulatory structure. Would you tend to agree with Mr. O'Toole there, and if so, tell me more about how you think the U.S. is trying to get us to be subservient to their tech agenda? I mean, I completely agree with Mr. O'Toole there. Mr. O'Toole there, I would smash the like and subscribe button to that quote. I mean, what is basically saying is what we're conversing about, how the United States is increasingly treating other countries' attempts to exercise their jurisdiction over the new economy as an impediment to U.S. commerce even occurring, right? Trying to shut down those accountability

conversations. I think that, again, the benefits, secret benefits of the new economy, the intangible economy, we may be online almost all day. We're using devices. We're subscribing to certain cloud services. We're, you know, renting Microsoft office for our small business in perpetuity. In a lot of ways, the U.S. is already our digital landlord, but it's less visible. It's less visceral than the conversations we're having about automobiles, about something as divisive as supply management, about even something as tangible and, you know, strong as steel. And then it's very convenient for these firms that the digital economy is just not top of mind when really it is the economy. It's where some of the largest economic value is created and perpetuated.

And I mean, just related to that, the U.S. release our national security strategy last fall, which outlines pretty explicitly how the Trump administration sees technology not just as an economic asset, right? But as a way to exert geopolitical influence and control, just say more about that for me. Well, I think, again, as they keep saying this and signaling these sorts of things, it is in Canada's best interest to start believing them, right? You know, even something like pushing up that NATO spending commitment that Canada has now said we will get close to or at that 5% mark of GDP, that is a policy push that fundamentally ends up benefiting American firms. Because when we want dollars to flow to, as the policy says, the defense industrial strategy, Canadian-controlled companies, Palantir Canada, a wholly owned foreign subsidiary registered here, will show up as a domestic firm, and we will count that money is flowing to a quote-unquote Canadian firm. Like, let's get real. It's going to an American firm, right? This is their interest. Increasingly, their kind of naked geopolitical ambition is a kind of monopolization and dominance

over others. Yeah. And I mean, you've written that Canada remains almost entirely under the thumb of American big tech. And just, is this kind of what you're talking about there? Yes, absolutely. I mean, I sometimes feel like I'm going a little bit crazy. Like when I hear our prime minister talk about reducing our dependency on the U.S. when it comes to oil or energy, but not extending that conversation to technology, I have a big question mark. Now, you have to imagine that, Anything Canada were to do to continue to diversify away from from big tech, right? Could be met with retaliation. But isn't that kind of why it's so worth it in the first place?

Like other governments are doing things. This is, again, some examples from the EU that I find really compelling, really simple. They're moving off Microsoft just for government services. They're building proprietary privacy preserving systems. Like, wow, that seems kind of good. Are we writing briefing notes on our trade negotiations on Microsoft Word and sending them around on Microsoft on Amazon Cloud? Like, does that make sense to anyone?

No, it shouldn't, but it's what's normal. It's what's familiar. It's what works. And we tend to treat a lot of these technological things as just inevitability. Why fight it? You know, oh, it's so big. or it works really well. It's what we're used to. Better and different is possible. It's not just the price. It's also our security and our resiliency. So again, I do think it's the next step. It feels like

it's hiding in plain sight. It's kind of everywhere and nowhere at the same time, too. Talk to me more about why it is a problem even if it works. I mean, you and I are talking on Zoom right now. It's working pretty well. Don't tell everyone. No, I know. We are on Zoom. We are on Zoom. Well, when you're so digitally dependent, again, it's a form of leverage that can be weaponized over us. Again, feeling like online is just the internet or social media and kind of fun stuff with friends kind of starts to ignore the digital infrastructure that underpins the whole economy, right? Payments, how commerce moves, how information moves. You don't want to stay subordinate to a hostile actor that can throttle access to those infrastructures

or weaponize those infrastructures further by collecting, you know, the information that runs through them to surveil people or to, you know, derive new insights to feed to very hungry algorithmic systems. Again, I like to just use examples that are hiding in plain sight or stories. You know, like ICC criminal court judge Kimberly Proust, who was sanctioned by the Trump administration. Last August, the U.S. State Department imposed its most recent sanctions on Judge Kimberly Prost and two other ICC judges for investigating, arresting or prosecuting nationals of the U.S. or Israel. Years earlier, Pross was involved in a court decision to investigate American soldiers suspected of war crimes in Afghanistan. She cannot send an email. She's listening to music on her Walkman. And she's living our 90s dream for sure.

But she can't book a hotel room to go on a trip. All of us were most shocked about is all the companies and services you depend on. You don't think about. Amazon was cut immediately. Alexa was dead when I went home. There's small matters in a way. But when you bring them together, it's really a crippling effect on your daily life. And it's very difficult.

Would we, could we be bullied? by that in the future? I mean, yes, we could. And people like to debate the probability of that. And I basically think that's the definition of risk. Like, let's not wait until it happens. If we value the ability to control the information commons and protect our data and information, then we need to be doing more to actually do that. And that means diversifying away from the U.S. It means building more sovereign alternatives, building and owning them. Again, exciting things that I think people can get behind. Well, okay, I want to talk about that with you because there just isn't really a Canadian equivalent to Amazon web services, right?

There isn't really a Canadian equivalent. Who told you that, Amazon? Well, is there to Microsoft? Like, how do we we wean ourselves off of American tech when, I mean, look, I would love you to, disagree with me here when it seems like they're the only game in town. So we have, I mean, we have, they're called Neo Clouds. I think that's a cool name. It gives me Tomogachi vibes. I would buy one. We have smaller, again, we have comparatively smaller in terms of scale, but we do have those alternatives when it comes to cloud and storage. There are open source systems

or email. Other jurisdictions are experimenting with open source ad tech or looking to build their own ad tech stacks. Again, the ad tech stack, which is dominated by Google and meta, is really a source of, you could argue, control and influence, right? What information and ads, but what information do we see when and why that is controlled by a foreign actor? I worry we're going to lose our institutional imagination. Like, over time when sovereignty has sort of heated up, Canada has always built new things, policy frameworks, new institutions, new crown corporations. They haven't all kind of stood the test of time because the country's priorities and value shifted, but we responded and we responded using public policy. That's the definition of sovereignty, building, controlling,

designing, using the tools of the state to design and maintain the environment that you want. So the thought that we would just, one, seed more ground on digital while not also trying to build up more of that sovereignty, again, makes absolutely no sense. It almost feels comical like some kind of weird joke, at least to me. Is it fair to say, though, I just want to push back on that a little bit, that we would need a huge amount of investment to get these Canadian companies to the same scale as their U.S. counterparts. It can't just be as easy as moving over sort of subscriptions, right? Yeah. No, and I don't want to present it as, you know, we need to rebuild the digital economy from the ground up here, and that's the only way to proceed. I mean, when it comes to, it's like, where do we start?

What do we value most? When already, when we're storing and protecting government information, we have set and try to hold a higher standard around it, right? and with that sovereign cloud procurement that I was speaking to, that's what we were starting to do. If we're going to build better infrastructure for our health data to keep that health data in Canada, data that's already subject to a higher standard, its own separate set of privacy laws, then we need to continue building that and protect it from the hyperscalers. But again, I think that building when you think about how do we catch up and can we catch up and how long would it take, I mean, even with public AI models, like, it's nice to be able to access the highest and sort of best ones, the Cadillac of AI models.

But sometimes for a lot of the work that we want to do, like a Corolla will do, we can make a lot of modest but meaningful changes. Canadians showed us that they're willing to make all kinds of modest but meaningful changes that have real impact, where they travel, what they buy, the grocery store. As we're building businesses, right, as we're building infrastructures for schools and work, there are already many Canadian alternatives that people can switch to. Even something as simple as there's a Canadian document company called, I believe, C-Docs, right, instead of doing your work in Google Docs. Those are the modest kind of incremental and in aggregate meaningful changes that will make us less dependent on those American firms that are hugely, hugely influential to our ability

to even really be a country. In the last year, so the Carney government has said that they're putting more than $2 billion into Canadian AI. They're investing in compute and cloud infrastructure. They have plans to build a world-leading public AI supercomputer. Giving researchers and businesses access to security. secure high performance compute power for their greatest innovations. Are those meaningful steps towards digital sovereignty to you?

Those are meaningful initial steps. But, you know, we haven't seen the almost $1 billion for that AI supercomputer flow yet. We haven't seen who the successful bidder is. Are we going to be happy and excited if Microsoft Canada is building our sovereign supercomputer? There are probably some decent arguments as to, why they could be superior to procure with than, you know, a company that's smaller and newer. But at the same time, it kind of flies in the face of sovereignty itself, right? If we're trying to build infrastructure that we own and operate and maintain that governance over.

So, yes, Canada has started to do some of these things. But again, let's see what happens with it and also how people respond. given the events of the last week, do you think this trade war provides an opportunity to make a greater push for digital sovereignty? Absolutely. I mean, I don't think digital sovereignty is this kind of extra other kind. It's not like icing on the sovereignty cake or like the cool part of sovereignty. It's at the heart of sovereignty. I don't think anyone in Canada is excited about us becoming like an algorithmic vassal state that just has to deal. with and suck it up in terms of whatever we get from large technology firms as a condition of having the pleasure and the privilege of procuring from and using their technologies. That's not how things should work. And I think the legacy of this moment and how we navigate it will be not only what we're

able to protect and not seed ground on, but if we're willing to step up and beat back some of those absolutely hideous provisions on digital that we agreed to last time. You know, for all the cliches of our elbows are up and our gloves are off, sure, they are. Again, maybe they always stayed up and off. But we should be pushing back on that. And we should be saying that us agreeing to not being able to hold digital firms accountable is actually unacceptable. And we don't want to perpetuate that going forward. Vass, I want to thank you so much for this. I'm so glad that we hived off this angle this week.

I just, I feel like it's not getting enough attention and you're such a great person to do it with. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Plesson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.