Evaluating the Fiscal and Technical Hurdles Facing Ottawa’s Sovereign Telecom Strategy
Two decades ago, when Andrew Clement began studying the routes that Canadian internet traffic take, he ran a simple test. Using a tracing tool, he followed data travelling between his University of Toronto office and the Ontario government servers at Queen’s Park, visible from his window.
He was surprised to see that the traffic made a detour: it routed hundreds of kilometres away, through Chicago and New York, before returning to Toronto.
“It blew my mind when I saw this,” he said.
Research that he conducted between 2009 and 2015 found that as much as 25 per cent of Canadian internet traffic was being routed through the United States.
Now a professor emeritus living in British Columbia, he recently repeated the exercise. When he accesses the federal government’s website from his home, the traffic does not travel directly to Ottawa. Instead, he says, it crosses the border and stops in Seattle before returning to Canada.
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In the face of increasingly protectionist policy from the U.S., an interconnection that once would not have raised concerns is currently prompting the federal government to invest in a coast-to-coast fibre network, which could protect sensitive data from U.S. surveillance and add capacity for future needs.
On Thursday, in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Prime Minister Mark Carney repeated plans announced two days earlier to build a cross-country broadband backbone, with connections to Asia and Europe – a route that could enable those countries to move data without it first passing through the U.S.
The announcement was celebrated by industry and various organizations as a way to improve access for those in rural and Arctic areas, support Canada’s growing artificial-intelligence and data-centre ecosystem, and provide capacity for future technologies such as quantum computing.
But reducing reliance on American technology will require more than laying new cables, experts say. It will involve better collection of data, improved regulation – and plenty of money.
And even then, Canadians will remain reliant on foreign-owned software systems that use the internet.
Currently, Canada’s main sovereign east-to-west fibre backbone was built more than 20 years ago, and is increasingly vulnerable to disruptions, including from natural disasters, according to information from Rogers Communications Inc. It’s projected that segments of the route may begin to run out of capacity in the next five to 10 years, the company said.
To start with, building a cross-country network would be a long-term endeavour taking “several decades” or more, said Charles Noir, vice-president of policy, advocacy and community engagement at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).
While the government has yet to provide any details about the cost or physical footprint of the new infrastructure, experts say it would likely mean a combination of laying new fibre, where existing networks lack redundancy or do not exist, and connecting existing networks that may be underutilized.
This network would be particularly beneficial in the Arctic, as it could offer an alternative to U.S.-based Starlink, said Carleton University professor Dwayne Winseck. (Various fibre networks to the North have been proposed, including the Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre, which would connect Manitoba to Nunavut.)
With costs of laying fibre running into the tens of thousands of dollars per kilometre, even before any undersea cables are considered, the financial requirements would be significant, experts say.
This could come as a challenge: Recently, Canadian telecom companies have been reducing their spending on domestic infrastructure, saying the regulatory environment does not encourage it.
Mirko Bibic, head of Bell Canada parent BCE Inc., told The Globe and Mail in an interview that while he is supportive of the project, the company will need to understand the economic model, and whether it really means building from “Vancouver to St. John’s.” If telecom providers and government are going to invest billions of dollars on constructing new networks, he said, “what, on the other side of this, will be the regulatory environment?”
Meanwhile, it’s been 27 years since the first project was proposed to run a fibre line through the Arctic, with repeated proposals having failed because of the expected $1-billion price tag, said Michael Delaunay, a Paris-based researcher for The Observatory on Politics and Security in the Arctic, a Quebec research centre.
Now, Mr. Carney’s commitment is a signal that Canada is willing and ready to work toward a solution, which could include supporting Arctic fibre as well as providing access to a coast-to-coast terrestrial-based network. The new fibre could also connect European institutions to Canarie, Canada’s research and education network.
“I think Mark Carney saw the opportunity,” he said. “Both the EU and Canada are looking for more digital sovereignty. It’s becoming something that is strategic, so it’s something they can work on together.”
But building these sovereign networks will be challenging.
For instance, changing network routing to prevent data moving between two Canadian points from transferring through U.S. internet exchange points isn’t as easy as simply flipping a switch. Telecom companies automatically route data through American switching points because it’s more cost effective or faster, Prof. Clement said.
To avoid routing domestic communications through U.S. internet exchanges, governments could make it a procurement condition that its internet service provider have “peering” – or connection – agreements with internet exchange points within Canada.
That could increase the speed of the Canadian network, making it more likely that data would physically remain in the country.
“It’s not something that could be done overnight,” and there would need to be adequate capacity for this to work, he acknowledged.
While governments have the power to do this, it’s currently unclear to what degree they are using it, CIRA’s Mr. Noir said.
And there are other complications.
For instance, not all Canadian fibre is owned by Canadian companies. Major portions of the network are owned by American interests, including Hurricane Electric, Cogent Communications Holdings, Inc. and Zayo Group Holdings, Inc., Prof. Clement’s research found. These companies are subject to U.S. jurisdiction; in extreme cases, an American government could require them to deny services here, he said.
Zayo – which in 2016 bought the network built by Canada’s major railways – is currently a major provider of internet services to the federal government, the company’s website says. It’s an example of how Canada now pays American companies to use infrastructure built with Canadian public funds, he said.
Meanwhile, Canada currently lacks domestically owned international links that do not first cross the U.S.
Currently, four primary international subsea fiber-optic cable systems connect Canada to other countries without the information first going through the U.S., according to telecommunications data provider TeleGeography. One, which runs from Vancouver to Japan, is owned by Google. The other three, which cross the Atlantic to Britain, are owned by subsidiaries of a Florida-based company. Any data not passing through these links must first run through the U.S.
And physical infrastructure isn’t the only thing that must be made more sovereign – the skilled work that operates and maintains Canadian networks should also be located within Canada, said Corey Mandryk, Union Official at United Steelworkers and representative of the Canadian Telecommunications Workers’ Alliance.
The Alliance, a coalition of unions representing telecom-sector employees, has been calling on government to recognize the growing reliance on overseas call centres or labour by Canadian providers.
“We would like to see conditions for this plan that include that the work on the critical infrastructure be done in Canada, by Canadians,” he said.
Moreover, Canada’s internet network, like that of the rest of the world, is inherently globalized – from the hardware, such as cellphones, radio receivers and routers that are designed and manufactured outside the country, to the software and cloud providers that Canadians use to communicate and store data.
“It’s messy,” Prof. Clement said. “You have to analyze the threats that are the most important, and where you can minimize risk.”
Already, Canada and other countries have taken steps to reinforce control. Several years ago, the Canadian government banned certain Chinese-made equipment for security reasons.
Meanwhile, governments of several European countries are moving their public-sector data off Microsoft in favour of open-source or home-grown solutions, on fears that the company could be compelled to reveal that information to the U.S. government as a result of that country’s CLOUD Act.
But a completely independent Canadian internet?
“A truly sovereign network is a very expensive and elusive goal,” Prof. Clement said. “That totallizing vision is, I’d say, excessively ambitious and actually misleading.”
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
