What to know
- Microsoft is gradually restoring its Microsoft 365 services after a global outage that began Thursday, leaving tens of thousands of users in Canada and the U.S. reporting issues accessing Outlook and other features.
- Several Toronto organizations were affected, including Unity Health Toronto, the City of Toronto and VIA Rail, with some services experiencing delays or turning to alternative communication methods.
- University of Toronto professor Evan Light says the incident highlights how vulnerable Canadian organizations have become by relying on a small number of major technology providers.
- Light warns that the disruption could continue to have consequences even after services return, as organizations work through backlogs of delayed emails and communications.
- The professor also says the outage underscores the importance of digital sovereignty and diversifying Canada’s technology infrastructure rather than relying so heavily on American providers.
Microsoft services are gradually being restored after a massive global outage that led to widespread delays and system pauses for several hours, but one expert says its impact could go beyond one day without sending or receiving emails.
Microsoft says it is making progress in bringing its Microsoft 365 services back up, after facing a widespread outage that started on Thursday afternoon, affecting several of its features.
“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services,” Microsoft said on X.
The software company announced on Thursday it was working to restore its services after multiple users in different regions reported issues accessing Outlook mailboxes and other Microsoft 365 features.
According to Downdetector, tens of thousands of people in the U.S. and Canada reported issues accessing the service as of yesterday afternoon. Although reports have significantly dropped as of this morning, some users still report delays on the platform.
Toronto services were impacted by the outage
Several Toronto services are still restoring their operations after being affected by the global outages, including hospitals, the city’s website, and transit services.
Unity Health Toronto hospital’s website displays a message warning users its email services are gradually returning to normal following issues, but emphasize patient care has not been impacted.
“If you are a patient and need to reach a clinic or department regarding an upcoming appointment, please call them via the main hospital line (if urgent) or wait until email services are restored,” the hospital said in a news release.
“If you are [a] staff member, please use alternative communication for important information or use our internal website UnityNet.”
The message comes after the hospital network reportedly declared a “Code Grey” in relation to the outage on Thursday, which is used to describe an infrastructure failure.
The City of Toronto website is also displaying a “Network Disruption” message, saying that some of its services may be unavailable or facing delays due to the outage.
Meanwhile, Via Rail Canada is advising riders to utilize its train tracker or SMS notification services, as some have been unable to receive email updates about their trips because of the outage.
‘It’s pretty terrifying’: Expert weighs in on outage impacts
Evan Light, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, said Microsoft’s global outage demonstrates how vulnerable several Canadian services and organizations are to technology issues, especially considering that many are dependent on the software.
The professor compares the impact of this outage to those of the 2022 Rogers telecommunications outage that left millions of Canadians with no cellphone or internet service for over a day, but on a global scale.
“Many people’s jobs depend on email these days… All sorts of information systems rely on email. I think innumerable parts of our society revolve around this basic form of communication, and you can see like [when] Rogers had a big cellphone outage that was somewhat similar but on a much smaller scale,” he said.
“It’s shocking that a company of the scale of Microsoft has had this outage for so long. My email is back today… but there are reports around Europe and Australia of people still not having access.”
Light said he would not be surprised if the impacts of the outage continue in the next several hours or even for a few days as organizations might be dealing with a significant backlog of delayed emails, especially considering that Microsoft has yet to provide a more comprehensive explanation for the incident.
“It might be unprecedented that a company of this scale has had this scale of an outage and not been able to explain it. I found it really confusing yesterday when they said we’re rebooting the servers… For the provider of email and file storage and messaging to millions of people to say, essentially, ‘We don’t know what’s happening. We’re rebooting the servers’ is pretty terrifying.”
Microsoft has said the issue was not related to cyber or AI agents, and appeared to have been introduced during a capacity upgrade. The company said it will offer a full report of the incident once a system review is completed.
‘It can tell us a lot about our dependency on American technology’: expert
Light also told Now Toronto he believes the incident highlights Canadian institutions’ dependence on U.S. technology, especially as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government continues to push out initiatives related to digital sovereignty.
“Something that usually goes unsaid in Canada is that our need for digital sovereignty is sort of all the way at all levels of government and community. We have school boards, we have schools, universities, governments from village governments to provinces [to] the federal government that all use Microsoft or Google products. None of them use Canadian providers of any sort,” he said.
For him, the incident might also be a demonstration of why it’s important for more institutions to consider embracing a variety of softwares or adopting Canadian-based technology, citing Office EU, a fully European office suite software launched earlier this year as an alternative to Microsoft 365.
“If things are really crucial when it comes to internet connection, often companies will have more than one IT provider, so that they can fall back on a second provider if a line gets cut or something. You could see [them] developing another email system to fall back on potentially,” he added.
