Is Your .ca Website Actually Canadian? Canada's Digital Sovereignty Measured Ten Ways — Only 6.5% of .ca Websites Are Canadian End to End
A .ca domain needs a Canadian owner, but nothing requires its website, mail or DNS to be Canadian. We measured all three for 1.86 million live .ca websites, followed hosting from 2023 to 2026, ran about 6,800 traceroutes from Canadian vantage points, timed the front doors of the largest operators from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, sampled .ca registrars and checked 989 government websites. Only 6.5% of .ca websites keep web, mail and DNS with Canadian operators and the website in Canada; 54.6% run all three on US-headquartered operators, more than Mexico, Australia or the UK. Physically, much of the .ca web answers from inside Canada; legally, four in five .ca websites have at least one layer run by a US company or hosted in the US. The 2025 tariff shock was followed by a small relative gain for Canadian hosting and no homecoming. For policymakers, registries, hosting providers and anyone running a Canadian domain.