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> Facebook promised to open a data centre in Canada to create jobs, in exchange for the federal government offering assurances that it would not impose its jurisdiction over the company's non-Canadian data.

This should not be legal in the first place.

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which part?

>Facebook promised to open a data centre in Canada to create jobs, in exchange for the federal government offering assurances

or

>impose its jurisdiction over the company's non-Canadian data

?

The latter part is italicized in the GP.

I don't really understand the legality argument though. Canada is a sovereign nation.

Canadian here. I could maybe (by which I mean probably not because of edge cases but the concept basically makes sense) get behind making it illegal under under Canadian Law to say "we'll do X if you promise not to pass laws about Y". That sounds a lot like bribery to me.

Note that "assurances" is italicized in OP - the former sentence better captures the meaning of the italicized area despite only containing one word of it.

That is exactly what I meant, sorry if I was unclear.

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