We’re a month shy of the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence, and another close ally has decided to celebrate by declaring independence from American tech, AI in particular.

The Canadian government on Thursday announced a new "AI for All" national strategy that will see Ottawa direct CA$1 billion ($719 million) toward expanding AI adoption and supporting Canada's AI sector. The plan includes CA$500 million through an AI financing program to help small and medium-sized businesses adopt AI tools, and another CA$500 million to expand support for Canadian AI companies through the Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative.

Prime Minister Mark Carney made clear one of the initiative's central goals: ensuring Canadians can build and use AI on Canadian terms.

“AI is here. The question is whether it will improve the lives of all Canadians or benefit only a few,” Carney said in a press release. “AI can … make a small business more competitive, if it is governed by Canadian values with a clear goal of improving the lives of all Canadians.” 

In other words, we don’t want your OpenAIs and your Anthropics north of the border, especially when American tech comes with so much political baggage lately.

Yet another ally pursues AI sovereignty

While the Canadian government frontloaded its target of $200 billion in economic growth, a litany of new AI-related jobs, building trust in domestic AI, and other five-year goals to boost the country’s economy, one of the most noticeable parts of the announcement, and the plan itself, is its insistence on Canadian sovereignty. 

“We will build the foundations of sovereign Canadian AI,” the announcement declared. That includes “compute, cloud, connectivity, data, and talent,” the government said, “so Canadian researchers, businesses, and public institutions can build and adopt AI on Canadian terms."

A major part of that sovereignty push will see Canada “strengthen multinational partnerships with trusted allies” as part of the Sovereign Technology Alliance Ottawa entered into with Germany this past February. 

“Canada will leverage 12 international partnerships,” the announcement continued, as part of its sovereignty push, which ought to be read less as an independent effort, and more like one in which a bunch of countries partner up to get rid of American tech influence. 

As mentioned elsewhere in the announcement, Canada has signed AI and tech partnerships with Germany, Australia, the EU, Finland, India, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, the UAE, and the UK since March 2025 - shortly after Trump took office for his second term and started getting belligerent with Canada and other allies, coincidentally or not. 

One can’t help but be reminded of the EU’s recent tech sovereignty push, which gained steam earlier this year when the EU realized relying on cloud technology provided by American companies under influence from an unreliable, mercurial US government liable to cut them off for petty revenge might not be the best idea. 

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been easy for the EU, as its sovereignty push has been complicated by the fact that, even if you make your own software, you’re still stuck dealing with dominant US chipmakers for your hardware.

Canada and its Sovereign Technology Alliance partners will have a tough road ahead of them if they intend to reduce their reliance on US tech companies. We reached out to the government in Ottawa, but it didn’t respond before publication. ®