Your data, on Québec soil.
Under Québec law.
Digital sovereignty isn't a marketing line for Béluga — it's an infrastructure choice: we own our servers instead of renting a U.S. giant's cloud. Here's how, and why.
Our principles — and their limits, stated plainly.
Your data lives in Québec, on our servers.
Béluga is not a layer on top of AWS, Google Cloud or Azure. We own our servers, installed in Québec, and we operate them ourselves. Daily backups are encrypted before they leave our machines and their off-site copy stays in Québec. One documented exception, in principle 06: transcription of recorded meetings.
A Québec company, with no U.S. ties.
Béluga is operated by Technologies Shelter-Bay inc., incorporated under Québec's Business Corporations Act. No parent company, no U.S. subsidiary, no investor who could force us to disclose your data. The CLOUD Act and FISA 702 apply to companies under U.S. jurisdiction — not to us.
Loi 25, taken seriously rather than as a slogan.
A privacy officer is designated and reachable (rprp@beluga.quebec). Access, rectification and erasure requests are handled within 30 days, as the law requires. The admin console includes an audit log, DLP rules and legal hold for your own obligations.
Encryption where it matters.
TLS 1.2+ everywhere in transit. Convo conversations are end-to-end encrypted by default — even we can't read them. Mail passwords are encrypted at rest, backups are encrypted before leaving for the off-site copy, and Béluga never stores your main password: authentication goes through Keycloak, with 2FA and passkeys (Face ID, Touch ID, hardware keys).
Open standards, no lock-in.
Your email reads over IMAP, your calendars over CalDAV, your contacts over CardDAV — with the apps of your choice, today and the day you might leave. vCard and iCalendar export included. Billing is monthly, with no commitment.
Transparency about what leaves — and what's missing.
Two processes leave our servers and we name them: card payments (Stripe) and transcription of recorded meetings (Mistral AI, France, covered by a privacy impact assessment). And let's be frank: we are in open beta, with no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification yet. We document our security publicly rather than display logos we don't have.
Our servers.
Not a giant's.
The cloud is always someone else's computer. Ours belongs to us: hardware we bought, installed in Québec, and operate ourselves.
Owned servers, in Québec
Bare-metal servers we own, installed in Québec. No renting from Amazon, Google or Microsoft — not even their "Canadian regions".
One monitored front door
All traffic flows through our dedicated gateway, with an application firewall and automatic blocking of malicious behavior. Administration is reachable only over VPN.
Encrypted off-site backups
Daily backups with point-in-time recovery, kept 30 days. The off-site copy is encrypted on our machines before transfer — and stays in Québec.
Service status, in public
Our status page is hosted outside our own infrastructure so it stays up even during a major outage. Incidents are documented there.
Why the "Canadian region"
of Microsoft is not enough.
Microsoft, Google and Amazon offer "Canadian regions" for their cloud services. That changes nothing about their exposure to U.S. extraterritorial laws.
Canadian data, U.S. jurisdiction.
- U.S. parent companies, subject to the CLOUD Act and FISA 702
- U.S. authorities can compel data without informing the customer
- Loi 25 compliance requires complex configuration and ongoing oversight
- Standard agreements in English, under U.S. jurisdiction
- Cross-border replication possible depending on enabled services
- Prices in U.S. dollars, converted
Québec data, Québec jurisdiction.
- Incorporated in Québec, no U.S. subsidiary or owner
- Out of reach of the CLOUD Act and FISA 702
- Loi 25 compliant by default, no special configuration
- Agreements in French, under the Civil Code of Québec
- Servers owned outright — no third-party cloud region
- Prices listed in Canadian dollars, monthly billing without commitment
What's in place,
and what isn't yet.
Here is where we stand, without embellishment. Organizations that choose us during the beta do so with full knowledge — and that's exactly the kind of relationship we want.
Québec's Loi 25
Designated privacy officer, complete privacy policy, incident registry, access and erasure requests answered within 30 days.
Federal PIPEDA
Our practices also cover the federal privacy statute for exchanges outside Québec.
Technical measures
End-to-end encryption in Convo, TLS 1.2+ everywhere, 2FA and passkeys, mail passwords encrypted at rest, backups encrypted before leaving.
Organization controls
Audit log, data-loss-prevention rules, legal hold, org-wide mandatory 2FA, allowed IP ranges, AI-connector kill switch.
Agreements in French
Terms and data processing agreement in French, governed by the Civil Code of Québec. No State of Washington jurisdiction.
Certifications: not yet
No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification to date — we are a young company in open beta. We'd rather tell you, and document our security publicly in the meantime.
Proven open-source software,
operated in Québec.
Each Béluga module rests on a well-known open-source component, which we integrate, secure and operate ourselves. No reinventing the wheel, no proprietary black boxes.
Integration, operations, security, support and the Québec-French interface — that's our work. And because these components speak open standards, your data stays reachable with the tools of your choice.
Promises we can
keep today.
No brochure promises — each commitment below matches what the service actually does, today, in open beta.
Notification of government requests
If a judicial authority demands access to your data, we inform you, except where the law expressly forbids it.
Your data never trains AI models
Your emails, files and conversations are never used to train artificial intelligence — neither ours nor a third party's.
No advertising, no data brokers
Our business model is subscriptions. No reselling, no profiling, no advertising pixels, no third-party analytics.
Monthly, no commitment
Every plan bills monthly and can be cancelled anytime from your account. No imposed annual contract.
Your data through open standards
IMAP, CalDAV, CardDAV, vCard and iCalendar export: you reach your data with the tools of your choice, without asking our permission.
Your Loi 25 rights, within 30 days
Access, rectification, erasure: requests sent to rprp@beluga.quebec are handled within the 30-day legal deadline.