Documents reveal Canada’s contract with Palantir worth up to $63 million — CBC

Since 2020, Canada’s Department of National Defence has held a contract for Gotham software from the U.S. company Palantir. It was initially valued at $14 million, while its potential value could reach $63 million. Documents on the agreement, which was internally designated as not subject to public disclosure, were obtained by the Investigative Journalism Foundation, CBC reports.

The department said Gotham combines information from military databases and operates on closed classified networks at secure Canadian facilities. The ministry did not specify what data the system processes, citing national security considerations.

Concerns over data access

Canada’s Department of National Defence says a security assessment determined that government data, queries, results or metadata cannot be stored, accessed or processed outside Canada. The ministry also said that the U.S. CLOUD Act has no authority over servers located in Canada.

However, lawyer Barry Appleton, who practices Canadian and U.S. law, challenged this interpretation. According to him, with due legal process, the CLOUD Act allows U.S. authorities to demand from U.S. companies data in their possession, custody or control, regardless of where it is stored.

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Policy researcher and PatternPulse AI founder Jennifer Evans believes the department should disclose more details about the contract’s security architecture, including the isolation of computers or networks from unsecured networks and the internet. Palantir said that clients own and control their data, while the company itself does not use it, retain it for its own purposes or share it with other clients.

Dependence on foreign technology

Vass Bednar, head of the Canadian Shield Institute, noted that the discussion also concerns Canada’s dependence on a foreign supplier of critical digital infrastructure. She called on Canada to invest in its own defence technologies.

Evans named Vancouver-based Caseway and Ottawa company Anvil among Canadian alternatives, but noted that they cannot yet match Palantir in scale and capabilities. In July, France and Germany pledged to reduce their dependence on foreign suppliers, considering national alternatives after Palantir’s contracts with their intelligence services ended.