The latest developments in Ukraine have been a sobering reminder of how much can be at stake when a country depends on technology it doesn’t control.
Ukraine’s military faced disruptions to satellite services used in drone operations. Elon Musk said the US government controls Starshield’s usage limits, while Reuters reported that an order to restrict the service came from within the White House.
Canada faces its own technology dependencies. GC organizations rely on foreign providers for critical parts of their digital infrastructure, including cloud services, network connectivity, AI models and the platforms that run many of our digital services.
Our government is taking steps to address this, including investing in Canadian AI computing capacity and developing sovereign cloud capabilities. That’s important progress, but building more data centres in Canada doesn’t automatically give us control over the technology running inside them.
Where to focus
There are a few things worth focusing on:
- Understand what we rely on. Look beyond the obvious vendors and map the technology dependencies that keep critical government services running.
- Know what happens if access is lost. Could we keep operating if a provider cut off access, a service went down or geopolitical tensions disrupted the relationship?
- Decide where to invest. Some dependencies may justify investment in Canadian capabilities or alternative providers. Others may be too costly to replace, meaning we need to understand and manage the risk.
When there’s no alternative
Business continuity and disaster recovery plans are built around restoring services or switching to another solution. But what happens when there’s no viable alternative and access is restricted for geopolitical reasons?
Canada is investing in digital sovereignty. We need to make sure those investments translate into practical alternatives when we need them most.