We wrote this op-ed back when the whole lake thing was popping off and sent it around in hopes of getting it published.
Vass Bednar beat us to the punch. And we’re glad she did. She wrote a brilliant piece for The Globe and Mail that’s well worth a few minutes of your time:
Google Maps has become a tool of digital imperialism.
But we’d already written ours. And the issue hasn’t gone away.
So, because it still matters, and because this is how sunk cost fallacies work, we figured we’d post it here anyway.
Without further ado, here’s our take:
Normally, questions about how we name places live in a wonderfully bureaucratic world of national naming authorities, cartographers and bodies like the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. You know, experts in the matter.
Then U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.”
Trump’s sharpie-stroke changed the name used by the U.S. government and its official geographic database. Google Maps follows the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) in the U.S., so its maps changed. Trump has asked Apple Maps to change it too (editors note: they have since capitulated).
So far, so American.
Then, maps embedded in Canadian websites changed.
Hydro One’s power outages map. The LCBO’s retail locations map. GO Transit’s station finder feature. A federal government infrastructure funding map. Even Elections Canada.
Obviously, they all know Lake Ontario is Lake Ontario.
The technology they rely on relabelled the body of water at the behest of a government that Canadians did not elect.
Canada has spent much of the current trade dispute with the United States focused on physical things. Steel. Autos. Critical minerals. Lumber. Dairy.
What we make, what we eat, and the infrastructure we depend on are elements of our sovereignty.
So are the digital platforms we use. The information we engage with and the content we consume online. The digital systems hiding in plain sight that governments, businesses, public institutions, and each of us rely on every day.
Expect to see pundits frame Canada’s only option as an either-or choice. Protecting either the physical or the digital. Something something digital trade alignment. On the ground or in the cloud, but not both.
It isn’t.
Canada needs both.
Much of the Canadian conversation has focused on data residency: is the data physically stored in Canada?
That is a very limited definition of sovereignty. It’s a far cry from what Canada actually needs to ensure we can self determine.
Data residency is about location. Digital sovereignty is about control.
A server can sit in Montreal while the company, software, rules, and key decisions are governed elsewhere.
Who owns the company? Which laws apply? Who controls the software? Who can change the rules? Who has access? Can we leave?
That’s the difference between residency and sovereignty.
The Canadian organizations are here. The maps are here. The servers are (probably) here too.
They are still controlled by forces beyond our borders.
That doesn’t mean all foreign technology is bad (some of it is). It certainly does not mean cutting ourselves off from the world.
Sovereignty is not solitude.
Being sovereign means Canada can connect openly, and on our own terms, with the rest of the world.
That means having enough Canadian infrastructure, companies, and expertise to give us meaningful choice. It means building open systems that can work with technology elsewhere (should we choose).
Governments and institutions should ask who controls the technology they buy, not just where the servers reside. Citizens should be able to move their information and change providers without rebuilding everything from scratch.
None of this is easy. And data residency is a great start. Keeping Canadian data in Canada is an important step.
It can’t be the last step.
We know because we have done it ourselves.
Our small team built Gander Social from the ground up on sovereign Canadian infrastructure. It was harder than buying off the shelf solutions. Entirely possible though.
Gander is the only social platform in Canada built this way. The data is here. The website is here. The mobile app, databases and servers are here. More importantly, the infrastructure they run on is sovereign and governed in Canada, outside U.S. jurisdiction.
If a small Canadian team can make those choices, then larger companies and public institutions can make them too. Not overnight. Not everywhere. But deliberately, and more often than we do today.
Which brings us back to Lake Ontario.
Nobody hacked anything. Nobody in Canada approved a new name. In fact, to our credit most of us scoffed at another tired cry for attention.
A decision was made upstream, in technology controlled somewhere else, and it flowed right into Lake Ontario.
And for the moment, it’s put Canada’s digital sovereignty problem dead centre on the map.
