National Defence using U.S. cloud services for ‘mission critical’ applications

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during an event in Jakarta, Indonesia on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

OTTAWA — Newly released documents show Ottawa has spent almost $1.3 billion on cloud services provided by U.S. companies, with most of the money going to Microsoft — and its uses include what it calls “mission-critical” defence applications.

The information was shared in a government response to a question posed by Conservative MP Todd Doherty. He asked government departments and agencies how much they have spent since 2021 on cloud services provided by Amazon, Microsoft and Google, and to identify which of those cloud services cover critical government functions.

“Amazon Web Services hosts several mission-critical applications that directly support operational readiness and national security,” the response from the Department of National Defence says.

Those applications include systems the Royal Canadian Air Force uses for “aircraft coordination and maintenance, as well as situational awareness tools employed by the Canadian Army,” the department says.

It adds those capabilities are “essential to both domestic operations, such as emergency response, and international engagements.”

National Defence spent $4.57 million on Amazon Web Services, another $8 million on Microsoft services and $835,691 on Google services.

It says Google Cloud “provides advanced artificial intelligence services that enhance operational capabilities across various defence functions,” including real-time language processing, while Microsoft Azure supports the military pay platform and “hosts operational planning tools used by the Canadian Army to manage daily activities and long-term strategic initiatives.”

The government responses included in the document, tabled in the House of Commons this week, offer a snapshot of the extent to which the federal government uses cloud services provided by U.S. companies.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has spoken about the idea of building a “sovereign cloud” in Canada. He said last week such a project would “build compute capacity and data centres that we need to underpin Canada’s competitiveness, to protect our security and to boost our independence and sovereignty.”

A sovereign cloud is a computing environment companies use to run services which can be set up to comply with a specific country’s laws or core values.

Guillaume Beaumier, an assistant professor of political science and international studies at l’École nationale d’administration publique in Quebec, told The Canadian Press in an earlier interview that with a sovereign cloud, companies can ensure the data and infrastructure their services operate on are confined to their own country — with no outside access for other nations.

Companies like Amazon and Microsoft have started to develop sovereign clouds but those are subject to U.S. law, Baumier said.

The Cloud Act allows the U.S. government to ask American companies that have offices or infrastructure in other countries to hand over data they hold abroad if it is required for law enforcement.

That means Canadian data could be at risk — particularly now that Canada is locked in a trade war with the U.S. — and the goal of developing a sovereign cloud would be to avoid that risk, Baumier said.

More than $1 billion of the government’s total spending on cloud services went to Microsoft. The government spent $247.4 million on services from Amazon, with the vast majority going to Amazon Web Services, and around $22 million on services from Google.

— With files from Tara Deschamps

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2025.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press