Government systems often require people and businesses to repeatedly provide the same information, with inconsistent identity verification and limited ability to share trusted data across services. In 2025, more than 112,000 cases of fraud were reported, with losses exceeding $704 million, and many cases are never reported. Canadians also face delays in accessing benefits, service disruptions, and long processing times. These issues are connected. They reflect a structural gap in Canada’s digital systems: the absence of shared capabilities to verify identity, exchange trusted data, and support secure transactions.
In our June 2025 blog post, we asked: What would it take for Canada to build the digital public infrastructure (DPI) that people and the economy need? We argued that the core components of DPI, digital credentials, data exchange, and payments, should be treated as essential infrastructure, not a set of IT projects. We also noted that building national DPI couldn’t happen in a federal vacuum, and that an ambitious undertaking like DPI would require a whole-of-society pull over the past year since our initial blogpost, this has only become more evident.
Like roads linking places, well-built DPI connects services, unlocks economic potential, enhances security, improves user experience, and builds resilience to help Canada respond in times of crisis. For example, Estonia’s data exchange layer, X-Road, saves over 1,345 years of working time annually, while digital signatures (a feature of Estonia’s credential system) are estimated to save 2% in economic output annually. In Brazil, public sector-owned instant payment system Pix has saved consumers and businesses over $29 billion (CAD) since its launch in 2020.
From distinct IT projects to national infrastructure
Across Canada, multiple efforts are underway to advance DPI systems, including political commitments, funding for programs, and new legislation. Budget 2024 provided funding to establish the Enterprise Digital Credential Office to advance a single sign in, CanadaLogin. It also recommitted to implementing an ePayroll program to securely share payroll and employment information.
In January 2026, First Ministers committed to moving forward with digital credential recognition to support labour mobility in the trades. In February 2026, the Connected Care for Canadians Act was reintroduced in Parliament to help health information systems work together across the country. While these initiatives are well intentioned and demonstrating progress in recognition of the potential of DPI, they are still happening in isolation within individual sectors.
Understanding Canada’s jurisdictional complexity
Canada has multiple levels of government with different rules, which makes DPI a shared responsibility. Indigenous bodies and sectors also have different mandates, legal authorities, funding models, and incentives. Unlike physical infrastructure, digital systems do not align neatly with jurisdictional boundaries.
For example, federal data centers may be operated at the national level, located in different provinces, powered by provincial utilities, and connected through both public and private networks. This means that disruptions can impact multiple governments and organizations. In some remote and northern communities, basic infrastructure is still limited. Furthermore, a shared platform built and hosted by the federal government must follow federal procurement rules, security standards, and privacy law. A province adopting that platform does not automatically inherit those rules: it brings its own. This means the challenge is not only technical but also involves laws and policies. Shared platforms must operate across different regulatory frameworks, and digital capacity varies widely across jurisdictions.
In many sectors, these complexities are managed through coordination and setting common standards. In the digital context, this complexity changes quickly. Technology evolves faster than legislation, and security risks do not wait for formal agreements. This means that DPI governance should be designed not only for stability, but for continuous adaptation.
Convening interjurisdictional roundtables to advance DPI
To help advance the conversation and development of a broader DPI strategy in Canada that goes beyond meeting the needs of the GC specifically, the Canadian Digital Service (CDS) and the Digital Governance Council (DGC) hosted three roundtable discussions on digital credentials, digital payments, and data exchange (January – March 2026).
CDS partnered with the DGC due to their mandate as a national, member-driven, not-for-profit organization that works to coordinate national approaches concerning critical digital governance challenges and opportunities facing Canadian people and organizations in the digital economy. The collaboration was grounded in a shared commitment to moving from dialogue to meaningful action in shaping Canada’s digital future with regards to DPI.
These roundtables brought together experts from Brazil, Estonia, and Singapore to share their experiences with Canadian officials. This was followed by a discussion with a small, diverse group of leaders from the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors in Canada. The roundtables aimed to:
- Gain insights on what different sectors need, investment priorities, and current DPI initiatives.
- Identify practical use cases that can serve as pilots that can be scaled up and confirm whether partners could co-invest.
- Explore ways for governments and key sectors to continue working together.
What we heard: three key takeaways
1. The importance of Canada’s digital and economic sovereignty
Much of today’s technology is shaped outside of Canada. This means Canada has less influence over product design, data handling, risk management, and where value is captured. This can result in limited visibility into how data is used, shared, and monetized both locally and abroad, and may introduce additional costs for people and businesses in Canada.
Amid shifting trade dynamics with key partners, participants emphasized the need for Canada to reinforce a stronger economy that can respond quickly to the needs of people and businesses across the country and is more resilient against external geopolitical pressures.
They noted that Canada’s economy is dominated by a few large players, including foreign vendors, particularly in telecommunications, banking, groceries, and transportation. Some said that greater competition and innovation driven by reliable and value-aligned players could help strengthen economic resilience and affordability in Canada. Across sectors, many identify sovereignty as a priority, along with a willingness to collaborate on shared solutions.
Opportunity: Explore where DPI could support greater national autonomy, reduce reliance on foreign providers, and help ensure that core digital capabilities reflect Canadian public interest and values in enhanced service delivery and safeguarding sovereign digital infrastructure.
2. Manage DPI core components as interconnected living products
The core components of DPI, data exchange, payments, and digital credentials, are not one-time builds. They are systems that need to continuously evolve. Participants noted the value of managing these components as an integrated and evolving set of platforms rather than standalone systems. This requires the ability to build, scale, maintain, and adapt digital systems over time.
In Canada, provinces, territories, and various sectors are developing their own digital systems at different speeds, using different standards and technical specifications. This makes it harder and more expensive for systems to work together over time. It also leads to service disruptions, inequities, and administrative burdens.
For example, it can make it difficult for workers and businesses to operate across provinces, reducing mobility and productivity. Fragmentation can also create friction for people and businesses, including delays, errors, and increased risk of fraud. Some participants raised concerns that inconsistent data practices may limit how effective and scalable artificial intelligence (AI) can be.
Opportunity: Continue exploring DPI systems as part of an evergreen product ecosystem with shared standards across sectors and jurisdictions to reduce fraud and improve service experiences to verify information and use trusted data across systems.
3. Invest step by step in shared challenges while leveraging what already exists
Participants described DPI as an excellent way to address long-standing national issues. Across Canada, public institutions, including federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, and universities, manage their own IT projects. This can create duplication of work and dependence on specific vendors. Participants noted the importance of investing together in shared problems and reviewing initiatives that are not delivering results.
Best practice is to start with simple; low‑friction use cases that show value and can scale over time. Existing tools, including open-source software, standards, and localized systems, could be adapted for new needs.
Opportunity: Redirect spending towards shared challenges and interoperability to support broader improvements in public services aligned with DPI.
The path ahead: From fragmentation to foundations
Roundtable discussions highlighted a clear lesson from global experience: DPI succeeds when governance, funding, and laws are aligned with the public interest and market incentives, not just because of technology. DPI should not be treated as a single IT program, a federally owned platform, or a one‑time modernization effort. Instead, it must be seen as a shared public infrastructure that supports local autonomy while allowing systems to work together across the country. Delivering on this vision of shared DPI depends on several conditions:
- Stewardship: Canada will need to strike a balance between strong federal stewardship that sets standards, policies and frameworks to align jurisdictions while enabling locally tailored service delivery. This balance is essential to drive interoperability,
- Safeguards: Strong privacy expectations in Canada mean that any capabilities affecting personal information and consent needs to be protected. Additionally, low tolerance for procurement failure and vendor lock-in requires oversight, accountability and more vendor access/competition.
- Investments: Effective DPI requires strategic, sustained, and incremental investment that enable phased delivery. This allows for learning, and adaptation over the course of the technology lifecycle, rather than relying on large, upfront funding commitments.
- Inclusion: DPI design depends on understanding people’s lived experience, and co‑creating systems that reflect real needs, drive adoption, and deliver measurable impact. This includes supporting Indigenous communities to shape DPI in ways that advance indigenous data sovereignty and self‑determination.
By building on local strengths, shared funding and governance, as well as inclusive design, partners across the system can help ensure DPI works together so services are secure, seamless, and easy for people to use, not just for organizations. Interoperability is not owned by any single actor, it is a shared responsibility.