Internet governance has historically focused on international arrangements to ensure that the internet can evolve as a multi-layered infrastructure for global prosperity. Within these governance spaces, regional arrangements, at the continental or subcontinental level, have emerged. Such arrangements allow countries and their internet governance stakeholders to set digital policies that act either as continental laws, such as those passed in the European Union, or as multi-stakeholder policies and technical standards agreed by independent stakeholder consortiums. Via regional arrangements, countries and their internet stakeholder communities can find alignment together for a strengthened multinational digital landscape.
But at a time when Canada is urgently rethinking cross-border arrangements in our immediate neighbourhood, we lack such a regional approach. There is an opportunity, however, to find new partners for internet governance. Although our immediate regional neighbourhood takes the form of the United States , we could envision a new grouping with other countries of similar economic size, democratic institutions and values, one that would not be geographically bound. We could create a coalition of middle powers as a vehicle for multi-stakeholder dialogue and a coordinated approach to digital policies. Canada could partner with countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. Such a partnership would allow us to reap the benefits of regional internet governance without having to rely on our current turbulent North American physical region.
Finding Community-Driven Approaches
Regional and global internet governance spaces tend to be multi-stakeholder in nature, involving not only government policy makers, but also experts from other stakeholder groups. Their constituents include governments, the private sector, technologists, academia, civil society and end-users, along with other groups still emerging, such as youth. In this internet governance ecosystem, stakeholders from many countries typically work in regional blocs, for numerous reasons. Multi-stakeholder communities from the same region can come together to make and deliberate policies in a shared language, such as Spanish in Latin America. Likewise, regional blocs will have similar needs and issues due to their infrastructure and shared histories. Through geographic closeness, these regional spaces find consensus and community-driven approaches to achieve internet governance ends.
Through geographic closeness, these regional spaces find consensus and community-driven approaches to achieve internet governance ends.
From a technical perspective, certain internet resources are delineated at a regional level, for example, internet numbers, the “ones and zeros” that are the building blocks of our digital world dispersed at the continental level to physically interconnected network operators. Conversely, spaces to discuss internet governance and policy issues can require subcontinental conversations based on geographical arrangements (for example, Caribbean countries, the Middle East and North Africa as blocs). In these spaces, regional meetings of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) — the key global framework for multi-stakeholder dialogue on internet governance and regional digital policy issues — have propagated around the world both continentally and subcontinentally. IGF meetings have taken place in every region of the world except North America.
There are several reasons for the North American gap in regional IGFs. First, although the continent of North America is large geographically, the bulk of the territory is occupied by just two nations — Canada and the United States. In contrast, the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG), as Europe’s regional IGF, can involve a complex array of diverse stakeholder groups from countries across the continent. More contextually, when considering, for example, country code domain registries, a European IGF can have a large swath of representation from every country code Top Level Domain — ccTLD — represented on the continent, whereas in a North American context, the richness of the conversation is restricted because our continent is composed of fewer countries. Additional considerations for North America include Mexico’s merging into Latin American internet governance due to the Spanish language, and Caribbean countries finding their own shared identity as the world’s oldest regional IGF for more than two decades. Within the North American region, Canada and the United States are left as two countries with common languages and histories, a pairing that does not seem as ripe for diverse dialogue on internet governance. What is more, the United States, as a digital superpower, can create a significant power imbalance in dialogues between Canadian stakeholders and their American counterparts.
Challenging the Digital Empire
Where Canada has been unable to join a regional IGF movement due to a fragmented North America, we have national initiatives to ensure multi-stakeholder convenings (Canada has three IGF initiatives within its borders, with the Canadian IGF, the Québec IGF and the Canada Youth IGF). Our American counterparts have not been as successful with nationalized IGFs, resulting in infrequent IGFs that break the United Nations’ IGF recognition requirement that they be held annually.
Regionalized internet governance and digital policy discussions can be helpful in building assertive digital policies to regulate the digital sector, as well as in forming a multinational position on internet governance at international fora such as the United Nations. Where regional groups are helpful for many countries around the world, superpowers do not need to abide in these collaborative efforts. The United States’ superpower status has meant that Americans do not necessarily need to consistently work with other diverse regional stakeholders to achieve their own digital policy goals. Due to its size and dominance in the digital space, the United States has become what legal scholar Anu Bradford characterizes as a “digital empire.” In essence, the United States can chart its digital future in isolation without a concern for any fallout. At the continental level, Canada, as a middle power beside a superpower, becomes isolated in the north end of North America.
Regional blocs can be especially effective in challenging the hegemony of superpower states, or digital empires. Europe has been especially politically savvy in standing up to American tech titans such as Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google) through the General Data Protection Regulation and regional competition policies. But although Canada is a middle power, with an economy larger than those of many European countries, we lack the capacity to formulate and create digital policies within a region for a strengthened approach to our domestic digital policy goals.
Partners Need Not Be Neighbours
But there is a caveat to this internet governance regionalism. Key here is that international interest blocs do not have to be geographically proximal on a continent or around an ocean. The BRICS countries (the original Brazil, Russia, India and China, later entrant South Africa, and new members Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates), for instance, have been able to develop a range of digital policies in their trading bloc, to enhance their digital sovereignty in the face of American power. Economies of similar size and prominence can come together as a bloc to enact digital policy in their common interest. Similarly, Caribbean and Asian island countries have been coming together to form a group of Small Developing Island Countries, reflecting their experience as smaller economies with distinct telecommunications needs.
Trying to develop and enter a non-geographically bound digital interest bloc could not come at a more crucial time. Globally, the WSIS+20 — the World Summit on the Information Society 20 Year Review — will be determined in this year’s United Nations General Assembly . This review will determine whether multi-stakeholder internet governance will continue to be globally championed with diverse stakeholders empowered through this governance model. Additionally, the 2024 Global Digital Compact, which was passed at last year’s UN General Assembly, will begin to be implemented this year, which will shift global internet governance and digital policies going forward . This compact addresses areas such as digital literacy, broadband access and internet governance norms to list a few of its commitments that countries agreed to. Finally, in a moment when a technology oligopoly is forming in the United States and already rolling back digital safety mechanisms such as fact-checking and preventing the sharing of trusted news sources available on social media platforms, searching for mechanisms that can stand up for Canada’s digital policy goals rested in our values is a key task in this moment.
Canada can lead the way in creating a group of countries sharing similar democratic principles, histories and economies to ensure we can be a true middle power in the evolution of global internet governance and digital policies. It is time to chart our course into the digital future.
