In a recent development, “Lake America” labels have been activated on Google Maps, prompting U.S. President Donald Trump to urge Apple to do the same by default on every iPhone. This situation underscores the prevalent reliance of many Canadian consumers and businesses on U.S.-owned platforms, with limited alternatives available outside of American tech giants.
Anne Pasek, Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture, and the Environment at Trent University, emphasized that Canadians are significantly impacted by American tech monopolies, which govern many aspects of their digital and everyday lives under U.S. jurisdiction.
Several Canadian websites, including federal government portals and major banks, have exhibited maps renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America. This adjustment comes in response to an executive order from Trump, instructing the renaming of the Great Lake amid escalating trade tensions.
Google implemented the change for U.S. users and offered non-American websites the option to display “Lake Ontario” by adjusting map settings to Canada. The company clarified its actions as part of a consistent policy for bodies of water with divergent names across countries.
Following Trump’s directive, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stated that Trump reached out to Apple to request the alteration from Lake Ontario to Lake America within its applications. Apple has yet to respond to inquiries from CBC News.
The mapping tools of prominent U.S. tech companies not only provide navigation services to numerous users but are also deeply integrated into the operations of many Canadian businesses. These tools offer essential information like business hours, contact details, and reviews, while facilitating functions such as address auto-completion on e-commerce sites and traffic monitoring for ride-sharing and food delivery apps.
Emily Osborne, a policy research associate at the Canadian Shield Institute, highlighted the dependence of Canadian digital services on American firms like Google and Apple for navigation solutions. She suggested Dutch companies TomTom and HERE Technologies as potential substitutes for basic navigation services.
Osborne expressed concerns that heightened tensions between Canada and the U.S. could prompt the Trump administration to exploit other tech-related avenues to exert pressure on Canada, such as in payment processing and cloud storage. The outage experienced by Canadian businesses during the AWS incident demonstrates the vulnerability of relying on U.S.-owned digital infrastructure, particularly if access were restricted by government directives.
Osborne further underscored the reliance of Canadian businesses on major U.S. payment processors like Visa and MasterCard, emphasizing the absence of a Canadian alternative in crucial areas like credit card transactions.