Howard Levitt: How the ICE controversy in the U.S. spilled into Canadian boardrooms

Observers film ICE agents as they hold a perimeter after one of their vehicles got a flat tire on Penn Avenue on February 5, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

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When Canadian companies do business with controversial U.S. government agencies, it is rarely just a matter of revenue and service delivery. Rather, it is a stress test of corporate governance and stakeholder expectations.

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That truth was emphatically underscored as Vancouver‑based Hootsuite Inc. faced protests over its contract with U.S. Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), even as Jim Pattison Developments, as subsidiary of the Jim Pattison Group, backed away from a planned sale of its Virginia warehouse, which was about to be used as an ICE processing facility.

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Let me dissect what’s going on — and why lawyers and boards should be paying rapt attention.

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For years, environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations were relegated to “nice to have” slide decks at annual meetings. Those days are over. Canadian companies are now operating in a climate where public perception and values‑based scrutiny moves markets, affects customer loyalty and triggers boycotts or protests, eroding brand equity.

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Hootsuite’s situation illustrates this vividly. A contract valued at up to US$2.8 million to provide social media management tools and support services through a U.S. federal contractor has sparked protests outside the company’s Vancouver offices, with demonstrators urging the firm to sever ties with ICE and related agencies.

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Hootsuite’s CEO insists that the services provided do not include surveillance or tracking, and that the platform “makes public conversations visible at scale,” not targeting individuals. That reassurance failed to quell critics. The reputational risk is palpable — extending far beyond Vancouver street corners and into the boardroom and shareholder registries.

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What is striking is the pattern. Pattison Developments became aware of who the ultimate user of its Virginia facility would be — the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for ICE processing operations — only after the sale was announced. The public backlash was swift. Within days, Pattison announced the sale would not proceed.

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That raises uncomfortable questions about due diligence. Boards should be asking:

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In a world hyper‑attuned to social justice, human‑rights concerns and corporate complicity narratives, such lapses are no longer minor operational hiccups. They are strategic missteps.

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Critics of Hootsuite and Pattison point out that doing business with entities like ICE — especially against the backdrop of contentious immigration enforcement actions in the U.S. — can appear tone‑deaf at best, ethically compromised at worst. Companies that fail to anticipate these dynamics expose themselves to protests, negative media coverage and even potential disruption in sales cycles.