Mind your own business.

I don't think there is enough general awareness that much of our governmental, health, insurance and whatever databases are on servers within the US and therefore by US law open to US govt scrutiny. This also applies to information stored with subsidiaries of US companies operating in Canada even if their servers are within Canada.

I find it frightening. They are a foreign country, their interests are not our interests. It is only 200 years since they last invaded us and they do tend to have cowboy presidents. I am not anti-US, they are no more malevolent than any other foreign country but most of their population know nothing about us and care less. I don't like to be marginalized and definitely don't like being invaded.

What does it matter if Mrs. Brown's personal records are readable by unauthorised foreign entities? Probably not a lot but databases reveal a lot that is sensitive, like for instance how many men of military service age are in good health in any particular region? This is not anybody else's business.

A comment form Canspace:

Exactly - beyond for the sake of keeping business within Canada and simply national pride, there are indeed many legitimate business reasons to do so.

There are many horror stories in the web hosting world of websites/data and entire servers being seized under the "Patriot Act" never to be seen again. Fortunately we aren't subject to laws with such sweeping powers.

Bandwidth and datacentre space does carry a significant price premium in Canada vs the US (as with most other things), but this is something we feel is worth the cost.