MONTREAL — As a concept, digital sovereignty is a bit like motherhood and apple pie. It is very difficult to argue against it.

There is a certain patriotic flourish to the idea of securing Canada’s data infrastructure with made-in-Canada hardware and all-Canadian know-how. It is at once a national strategy, a make-work project for domestic tech firms and a bulwark against American hegemony, complete with a ready-made set of villains in Big Tech and Donald Trump.

In practice, there are potential pitfalls galore, one of which may well have just happened in Quebec. 

A couple of weeks ago, the Journal de Québec revealed that the government of Quebec’s cybersecurity ministry has been working for more than a year with Montreal-based IT consulting company CGI in a bid to create the Centre d’optimization, de développement et d’excellence numérique (CODE), a public-private partnership that would, if approved, oversee Quebec’s digitization and IT projects as an alternative to Amazon Web Services and other similar U.S. offerings.

The Quebec government would have a 51 per cent stake in CODE and retain control of intellectual property and source code, while CGI would own the remaining 49 per cent. Cue the cockle-warming nationalism: a public-private behemoth keeping the province’s data safe from American paws, thanks in no small part to a Quebec tech success story. It’s a narrative befitting “Gens du pays” as a soundtrack. 

Let’s start with the most obvious problem. In tethering itself to CGI, the Quebec government is arguably monopolizing an entire segment of a lucrative market and potentially stifling others from accessing it. 

Sure, it’s possible that CGI may currently be the sole Quebec-bred IT company big enough to handle the digital innards of millions of Quebecers. Yet tackling big, seemingly intractable problems is precisely what makes tech companies grow quickly. It’s how Facebook went from dorm room prank to online sensation in the space of two years, or how a certain former Ottawan turned selling snowboards into Shopify. 

Hell, it’s how CGI itself grew its employee count by roughly 11,000 per cent and its revenue by nearly 16,000 per cent in the first ten years of its existence. Quebec has a thriving startup sector. Should CODE become a thing, it could mean that nobody else has a shot at the mother of all contracts.

“I understand the goal to reduce foreign dependence on AI software and solutions,” Jaxson Khan, a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, told me. “At the same time, the policy question is: Does that mean government should take majority stakes in partnerships with private companies? Is that the most effective way to build and incorporate digital talent into government projects?”

There’s also a hint of desperation in the proposed CGI partnership, coming to light as it did in the dying months of a deeply unpopular government. CODE came hot on the heels of SAAQclic, the government’s disastrous $1.1 billion effort to digitize the provincial automobile licensing agency. In some ways, the potential deal with CGI could be a handy way to get out from under the scandal.  

There’s also an election in Quebec in less than six months, and the current bunch is about as popular as bad breath. Hardly an ideal time to foist a big, expensive quasi-monopoly on the storage of Quebec data. 

Cybersecurity minister Gilles Bélanger championed the CODE plan, writing in an open letter that the project would ensure Quebec’s data wasn’t subject to foreign laws. Bélanger resigned from government last week when he was left out of the new cabinet. 

Bélanger’s broadcasting of the CODE plan has seemingly irked his former ministry. “The ex-minister Mr. Bélanger made the choice to make certain declarations public,” cybersecurity ministry spokesperson Caroline Lemieux said, referring to Bélanger’s open letter. “As a ministry, there is no deal with CGI, therefore we can’t comment on hypothetical things.” CGI declined to comment on the record when asked about the CODE project.

It’s also worth noting how big, expensive quasi-monopolies haven’t always served Quebec well. Some 15 years ago, the province went through a series of public hearings that documented what happens when big construction companies wed themselves to political parties. In short: systemic, ingrained corruption used to secure contracts for the former and dollars for the latter.

To be clear, CGI’s reputation is peerless, and there’s no suggestion that the messy business of pouring concrete and laying asphalt is analogous to storing and safeguarding terabytes of data. I’d only say this: the scandal surrounding Quebec’s construction industry helped spawn the Unité permanente anticorruption, or UPAC, a police force dedicated to uncovering corruption within the government’s procurement process. 

UPAC recently took a look at the possible collaboration between CGI and the government—including the length of the deal and the potential risk of cronyism between Quebec and one of its biggest companies—and did what it is trained to do: raise a red flag.

Martin Patriquin is The Logic’s Quebec correspondent. He joined in 2019 after 10 years as Quebec bureau chief for Maclean’s. A National Magazine Award and SABEW winner, he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Walrus, Vice, BuzzFeed and The Globe and Mail, among others. He is also a panellist on CBC’s “Power & Politics.”