Canada wants to build data centres that are not just physically located here, but controlled here — a distinction experts say could determine whether the country can reduce its dependence on U.S. tech giants and keep Canadian data subject to Canadian rules.

But as Ottawa reviews more than 160 data-centre proposals to support the growing demands of artificial intelligence, the promise of “sovereign” infrastructure is already running into a harder question: how much control Canada can really have over data centres that may still rely on foreign hardware, foreign customers and digital networks that do not always respect national borders.

“This is probably going to be one of the single biggest tech issues that we are going to deal with as a country,” said Ritesh Kotak, a Toronto-based lawyer and technology advisor.