The leader of Canada's NDP party, Avi Lewis, is asking Prime Minister Mark Carney's government to block a deal worth US$125 million between Thomson Reuters and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. Lewis wants Ottawa to deny export permits — official government permission needed to sell certain products or services to buyers in other countries — and to stop giving public money or contracts to any company that does business with ICE.

The deal is between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a part of Thomson Reuters. It gives ICE access to a Thomson Reuters product called CLEAR for five years, at US$25 million per year. CLEAR is a database that collects and combines property records, social media information, and location data. A document obtained by the news outlet 404 Media says Thomson Reuters claims it is the only company that lets ICE do "continuous monitoring" of millions of people. The deal has been described as "newly renewed," meaning it continues a relationship that started in 2015, when Thomson Reuters first gave ICE access to CLEAR to help track people for deportation. This latest renewal is the first time the contract says the software will also help the Trump administration investigate supposed "voter fraud" in addition to "immigration fraud."

Wired reported that ICE is also using Thomson Reuters tools to identify unaccompanied minors — children who arrive in the U.S. without a parent or guardian.

Canada's National Observer first reported the story on July 21, 2026, in an investigation by reporter Jeremy Appel. The Guardian covered it more widely three days later, on July 24, focusing on Lewis's demands.

Lewis told Canada's National Observer that the CLEAR contract is a "reminder of how deeply entwined Canada's elites" are with surveillance and deportation. Thomson Reuters is owned by the Woodbridge Company, which is the holding company for the Thomson family — often described as Canada's richest family. This means a company controlled by Canadians is supplying data tools to a U.S. agency whose practices have been criticized for years.

A Thomson Reuters spokesperson said the company does not comment on customer contracts and pointed to a webpage saying CLEAR is licensed "exclusively to select businesses, law enforcement and government agencies" and that its "investigative solutions are not surveillance tools." That description does not match the contract language, which talks about continuously monitoring millions of people. This gap between what the company says publicly and what the contract actually describes could come up in Parliament if the Carney government decides to look into Lewis's demands.

The prime minister's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Thomson Reuters contract.

Lewis has suggested specific actions the government could take: denying export permits to companies selling equipment to ICE, and pulling public subsidies or government contracts from any company that works with the agency. These are real tools the government has. Export permits are controlled by the Canadian federal government, and the government also decides which companies can receive public contracts and subsidies. Whether the Carney government will actually use these tools is a different question from whether it has them.

This is not the first time the NDP has spoken out on ICE. In January 2026, the party made similar calls after two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis. This time, the demand goes further by targeting one specific, high-value contract with a major Canadian company, instead of just criticizing ICE in general.

A shareholder proposal at Thomson Reuters — a formal request voted on by the company's investors — asked the company to look into the human rights effects of its work with U.S. immigration authorities. It got about 3% support, according to CTV News. The vote took place in June 2026 and shows that pressure from investors is small but organized.

The broader picture is that this deal touches on three big political issues at once: how countries handle data that crosses borders, whether Canadian companies should be responsible for how their products are used by customers abroad, and how the Carney government relates to the Trump administration's immigration policies. Each of these issues has its own group of people who care about it and its own place where it can be challenged — whether through export controls, parliamentary committees, or shareholder votes.

The new contract's inclusion of "voter fraud" as a goal is also a change from earlier versions, which focused on immigration enforcement. This means the CLEAR database is now being used for two different purposes — immigration policing and investigations into election fraud — and those two areas have different laws and different political sensitivities. How the Canadian government responds to that change, if it responds at all, could set a pattern for future deals involving data tools that can be used in more than one way.