The Canadian government spent $46.8 million on a secret surveillance contract with Palantir Technologies Canada for the country’s elite special operations military unit — a contract internally flagged as “not for public disclosure” and expanded through 12 amendments without competitive retendering, according to records obtained by the Investigative Journalism Foundation and federal access to information documents.
The Contract
The Department of National Defence awarded contract W6399-19KF28/001/XL on March 27, 2020, to Palantir Technologies Canada Inc. for the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, which operates Joint Task Force 2 and units responsible for counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, and foreign and domestic special operations.
The relationship dates to a $997,434 pilot signed March 28, 2019 — a one-year evaluation licence for an information processing tool, awarded to Palantir Canada on a sole-source basis. The 2020 contract is its successor, with an initial value of $14,359,980.68.
Sole-Source, Expanding Scope
CANSOFCOM awarded the contract on a sole-source basis throughout, justifying the non-competitive procurement because Palantir was the “only supplier that could meet the key requirement” — identified in federal records as the Palantir Intelligence Processing Tool.
DND amended the agreement 12 times over five years. The 12th amendment, exercised in March 2025, added $5,802,759.30, bringing the total contract value to $44,384,072.09. DND told the IJF it has spent $46.8 million on the contract to date. Previous amendments covered additional software support, specialized services support, travel expenses for Palantir staff outside the National Capital Region, and an increase in authorized Canadian Armed Forces users on the platform.
DND spokesperson Kened Sadiku described the platform as Palantir’s Gotham software, saying it “integrates and collates existing data from various information storage mechanisms, allowing analysts to assess vast amounts of data and provide information visualization, with information control measures.”
“At this time of the contract, there were few companies worldwide that had developed this type of software technology,” Sadiku said. He declined to explain why the contract was never made public, citing national security, and defended the relationship on interoperability grounds, noting Palantir software is in use by Canada’s allies and NATO.
Hidden From Parliament
The access to information records show the contract’s scope extends beyond what DND disclosed to Parliament. When Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant filed a written question on government use of Palantir technology in May 2025, DND withheld all information about Palantir’s use at the North American Aerospace Defence Command, ruling it “proprietary to the United States Government.” Internal RCAF records released under the same ATIP request show Science Applications International Corporation working with Palantir on Maven Smart Systems for NORAD radar enablement across Canadian aerospace defence regions.
DND also signed a second contract with Palantir Canada in June 2025, worth $3.7 million, for a “data integration and analytics platform subscription,” the Toronto Star reported. DND used Palantir’s Foundry module intermittently between May 2022 and March 2024 to evaluate its data processing capabilities; Foundry is no longer in use.
Palantir’s Record
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Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp and initially funded by the CIA’s venture capital arm, draws persistent criticism for its work with US immigration and law enforcement agencies. Since January 2025, it has signed more than $81 million in contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including a $30 million deal to build ImmigrationOS, a platform that integrates federal databases to track undocumented immigrants. The US Army awarded the company a framework contract worth up to $10 billion in August 2025.
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