How Much Money Are Canadian Businesses Sending to US Software Companies?

When Canadians debate trade with the US, we talk about lumber and aluminum and agriculture. We rarely talk about software subscriptions. But the numbers are significant — and in the current trade environment, they're worth understanding.

The Software Trade Imbalance

Canada imports substantially more software than it exports. Statistics Canada tracks "computer services" as part of commercial services trade, and the picture is consistently one of significant net outflows to the United States.

Consider the market share of US software giants in Canada:

Microsoft — Office 365, Azure, Teams, and dozens of enterprise products are used by the vast majority of Canadian businesses. Microsoft's Canadian revenue likely exceeds $3–4 billion annually across all segments.
Salesforce — The dominant CRM platform used by large Canadian enterprises. Canadian revenue in the hundreds of millions annually.
Google Workspace / Google Cloud — Widely adopted across Canadian businesses and government. Substantial Canadian revenue.
AWS — Powers a significant portion of Canadian startups and enterprises. One of the largest cloud infrastructure spends in the country.
Adobe — Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Experience Cloud together represent significant Canadian spend across creative industries and enterprises.

What a Typical Business Spends

Let's look at a hypothetical Canadian business with 50 employees:

Microsoft 365 Business Premium: ~$24 USD/user/month × 50 = $1,200 USD/month
Salesforce Essentials: ~$25 USD/user/month × 10 sales users = $250 USD/month
AWS infrastructure: ~$2,000 USD/month for a typical SaaS application
Slack: ~$7.25 USD/user/month × 50 = $362 USD/month
Zoom: ~$15 USD/user/month × 50 = $750 USD/month
HubSpot Marketing Hub: ~$890 USD/month
Adobe Creative Cloud (5 users): ~$35 USD/user/month = $175 USD/month

That's approximately $5,627 USD/month — or about $75,000 USD/year — before accounting for current exchange rates. At 0.72 CAD/USD, that's over $104,000 CAD annually flowing to US software companies for a 50-person business.

Scale that across Canada's 1.2 million employer businesses, and you're looking at an enormous number — even if only a fraction of businesses have this profile.

The Currency Compounding Effect

Here's the part that rarely gets discussed: every time the CAD weakens, Canadian businesses effectively pay more for the same US software. This is structural disadvantage baked into depending on USD-priced tools.

Over the past decade, the CAD has ranged from $0.70 to $0.89 USD. A business that locked in contracts in CAD during the strong dollar years and then saw the dollar weaken would experience that as a free cost increase — no renegotiation, no notice, just a higher CAD line item on the P&L.

The Government Piece

Canadian government procurement of US software is its own significant story. Federal, provincial, and municipal governments collectively spend billions on software annually, much of it going to US vendors including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and various consulting firms. The Public Services and Procurement Canada procurement process has historically not weighted Canadian-origin software as a significant factor.

This is starting to change. Several provincial governments have begun emphasizing Canadian data residency requirements in procurement, which functionally favours Canadian vendors or US vendors with Canadian data centres. The federal government's digital services strategy has also started to acknowledge the data sovereignty implications of cloud procurement.

What Shifting 10% Would Mean

We don't need to achieve 100% Canadian software adoption to have a meaningful economic impact. If Canadian businesses shifted just 10% of their software spend from US to Canadian vendors, the economic effect would be substantial:

More revenue for Canadian software companies to reinvest in product development
More Canadian engineering jobs created
More Canadian VC exits creating capital for reinvestment
Reduced currency exposure for Canadian businesses
Reduced data sovereignty risk for Canadian sensitive information

The software equivalent of "Buy Canadian" doesn't require sacrifice. In most categories, Canadian alternatives are competitive on quality and often superior on compliance and support. The decision to use Canadian software is increasingly a rational business decision, not just a patriotic gesture.

Taking Action

The first step is visibility. Most Canadian businesses have never audited their software stack through a Canadian-vs-US lens. Once you do, you'll know which line items have viable Canadian alternatives and which don't.

The EhList.ca directory is designed to make that audit easier. Browse by category, find Canadian alternatives to your current tools, and make informed decisions about where your software dollars go.

The money is already flowing. The question is in which direction.