When Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette met U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in Washington in late April, she named two priorities as non-negotiable during the upcoming review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA): supply management and the French language. Digital sovereignty, including artificial-intelligence governance, was not on the list.

The omission is the story.

Quebec is, by infrastructure and electricity policy, the most-exposed Canadian jurisdiction to whatever the CUSMA review settles for the data centre, cloud and AI economy. To leave digital sovereignty off the priority list is not a choice of focus. It is a choice of authority surrendered.

The same week, the United States and Mexico opened formal CUSMA review talks. Canada-U.S. talks have not yet begun but Ottawa is also lagging in its approach because it will enter the negotiations with no AI legislation in force and no publicly stated position on the digital-trade chapter that will most directly shape the next decade of how AI is governed in this country.

Here is what that position should include: confirmation of non-discriminatory measures necessary to govern high-risk AI systems; preventative auditing authority over algorithmic systems for labour and consumer regulators; and explicit language preserving provincial authority to attach data-governance conditions to energy-access agreements with data-centre operators.

The issues are serious

AI governance is not a separate question from the broader CUSMA digital-trade debate. However, it is the most consequential instance of it.

The current provisions of the agreement that constrain Canadian sovereignty over data residency, online-platform regulation and government procurement of cloud services also constrain how Canada can supervise the AI systems that increasingly determine wages, hiring, health care, credit and access to government services. Whatever Ottawa concedes or fails to defend on the broader digital question, it concedes or fails to defend on AI as well.

Who governs the digital sphere? How U.S. proxy lobbying erodes Canada’s digital sovereignty

Who governs the digital sphere? How U.S. proxy lobbying erodes Canada’s digital sovereignty

Canada needs to develop its own AI computing power

Canada needs to develop its own AI computing power

Canada’s digital sovereignty debate overlooks software risks

Canada’s digital sovereignty debate overlooks software risks

Canada must ensure its digital sovereignty in the face of U.S. threats

Canada must ensure its digital sovereignty in the face of U.S. threats

The American agenda has two voices and the relationship between them is the key to reading what is coming.

The first........

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