Can Doug Ford actually ban U.S. tech companies from government contracts?
In IT, going "made in Canada" is easier said than done.
A key pillar of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s response to new U.S. tariffs was banning U.S. companies from the $30 billion the province spends on procuring products and services every year. As if to emphasize the point, he tore up a $100 million contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink to provide high-speed internet to remote areas of Ontario.
But when it comes to other tech deals, banning U.S. companies might not be an option.
How it works: Like the feds, other provinces, and municipalities across the country, the Government of Ontario has hundreds of contracts, subscriptions, and vendor of record agreements with American companies providing tech and IT services, from cybersecurity and cloud storage to the Microsoft Office programs public sector workers use every day.
Those are often served by the Canadian offices of U.S. companies. In Ontario’s case, that includes Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Adobe, Accenture, and Palantir.
Wait and see: The Premier’s Office and Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement did not answer questions by deadline about whether these agreements would face the same fate as the Starlink deal. But Ford said on Tuesday that contracts would be gone over “with a fine tooth comb” to find others that could be cancelled. The government has not clarified what could prevent agreements from being axed, but reasons could range from the cost of early termination to the lack of a viable alternative provider.
To be fair: It would be functionally impossible for any government to replace all of its IT vendors with Canadian ones, at least not at the scale required to support the work of hundreds of thousands of government employees.
Even if it did cobble together tech from Canadian and non-U.S. companies, migrating and training workers on new software for nearly every task they do would be a logistical nightmare.
Another competition consequence: As many people have found while trying to pick a new dish soap or toothpaste, simply “buying Canadian” is harder than it seems because of multinational companies taking dominant positions in their respective product categories. That effect is even more pronounced in tech, where a lack of regulation over the years has meant a handful of big companies have achieved or gotten near monopoly status when it comes to software and digital infrastructure we use to work every day.