2026-07-15 from tvo.org

This year’s Canada Day ended not with fireworks, but with a failed renewal of the CUSMA trade deal. Despite the incoming diplomatic slog of a possible 10-year annual renewal process, this is a potential win for Canada – and Ontario health care.

Nestled amongst the clauses governing automobile trade, tariffs, and agricultural exports is one on digital trade. Chapter 19 governs a North American virtual economy already worth more than $250 billion annually in cross-border trade. Most of this value is unsurprisingly captured by the United States, which hosts almost half of the world’s global data-centre infrastructure and whose firms control roughly 85 per cent of Canada’s cloud market.

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