Canada’s National Security Framework Will Live or Die By How It Treats Digital Sovereignty
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has released a new framework, The Plan for a Stronger Canada, built around the idea of “strategic autonomy.”
It’s been 22 years since the last time Canada published a formal national security strategy, so this is a big deal.
It’s also a serious document with a clear purpose. But autonomy built on digital systems Canada doesn’t own or control isn’t autonomy at all, and the framework’s success will depend on whether Ottawa is willing to define digital sovereignty, and what counts as a Canadian company, with real teeth.
The last policy was Paul Martin’s 2004 Securing an Open Society: Canada’s National Security Policy. It aimed to respond to the post-9/11 world but largely fell flat when Martin was replaced by Stephen Harper in 2006, and the political changeover undermined follow-through on the plan.
The Plan for a Stronger Canada centres on Canada building up and maintaining strategic capabilities across eight key areas:
- emerging technologies;
- critical minerals;
- defence;
- energy;
- transportation;
- pharmaceuticals and biotech;
- food security; and
- payments, settlement, and investment.
This initial document will be followed by five sector-specific policies with greater detail and roadmaps for execution:
- economic security;
- foreign policy;
- defence;
- intelligence; and
- public safety.
Together they reflect a view of national security as a whole-of-society challenge.
This appears to be a continuation of Prime Minister Carney’s consistent position that the increasingly volatile world requires a hardening foreign policy and greater focus on national security as a lens through which we view other issues like trade. The framework has a clear purpose and many elements are already under way through the Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) and the ongoing efforts to establish new security and trade partnerships with allies.
So this is an articulation of ongoing policy, not a pivot.
Capacity building in strategic capabilities will be a major challenge and the area where we need to be most aggressive in asserting Canadian sovereignty. All of these domains and capabilities detailed in the framework rely heavily on digital systems — often systems not built in Canada. The plan lists cloud, AI compute, quantum and telecommunications as strategic capabilities, but never defines what sovereignty means in practice with these technologies.
We won’t be able to build everything ourselves, nor should we try. The priority should be our areas of strength, where we can build our own capabilities and create chokepoints and levers that give us a stronger position when partnering with allies. This includes AI defence capabilities and quantum computing manufacturing. While the DIS’s Build-Partner-Buy framework is echoed in this new national security plan, we could still do more to actually define the parameters for what constitutes “building” a truly Canadian solution.
Like many other policies we’ve seen from the Carney government, the framework is tailored to the “variable geometry” approach to foreign policy, where partnerships are made as needed and based on practical considerations.
This means the national security framework is neither prescriptive nor prone to sweeping normative statements. It is an adaptable and practical approach to a dynamic security landscape. That flexibility is a strength, but an agile framework still needs immovable and robust core principles.
When it comes to digital systems, like cloud and AI, a truly robust definition of digital sovereignty and strong understanding of what will constitute a Canadian partner (namely one not majority owned by a foreign parent company) will be essential for success. These principles need to be durable beyond one government’s mandate in order to build a lasting and sustainable national security system that’s fit for purpose.
Ever since Prime Minister Mark Carney visited the European Parliament in September, we’ve been thinking about what a deeper alliance across the Atlantic Ocean could mean. As we hit send on this email, Carney is meeting with António Costa, President of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in Montreal. At the end of it all, we’re expecting an announcement of … something. There have been a lot of anonymous tips in news reporting, but at the Canadian Shield Institute, we prefer to read the formal communiqué rather than trying to interpret whispers. In the run-up to the summit, we’ve been doing a bit of research, and we published a few articles to set the stage. EU Media Marketplace The Europeans are trying to break the AdTech duopoly. Canadian companies have tried to work together to create an alternative to Google and Meta’s dominance. So far, Canada’s efforts have fallen flat. Will this new EU enterprise fare any better? Read our analysis here. We find this whole situation very interesting for two reasons: First, Canada and Europe have a lot of the same problems right now. We’re all trying to figure out how to reduce vulnerability from the United States, and that vulnerability extends to digital reliance on private-sector technology platforms. It seems like we could benefit by joining forces, but it’s going to take some work figuring out exactly what that looks like in practice. Second, AdTech is just really interesting! Programmatic targeted advertising is the economic engine of the internet, and in turn this kind of advertising is hugely influential on culture and society. AdTech dictates what kinds of businesses thrive and what kinds of content gets posted online. Once you start researching it, AdTech quickly starts to look like one of the most important dimensions of digital sovereignty. If the online economy is entirely dominated by systems controlled by a handful of big American technology companies, realistically both Canada and the EU will always be on the back foot on digital governance. Digital Services Trade Speaking of being on the back foot, did you know that U.S. digital services exports to Canada are worth more than all the autos, steel, aluminum, lumber, potash and electricity put together? Why aren’t we talking about digital trade policy more in the negotiations with the United States? Read our analysis here. And the European Union is in a similar position. The EU has done a lot more to assert digital governance, but their trade deficit on digital services just keeps going up. This is a kind of reliance that creates a meaningful vulnerability if the United States keeps playing hardball. Read our analysis about EU digital trade here. Digital services might be a promising area for Canada and the European Union to work together. When the final communiqué is delivered from the Canada-EU summit, we will be combing through it for specific mentions of digital trade collaboration. Digital Sovereignty Policy Despite the EU’s digital dependence, we see a lot to admire in how the Europeans have been trying to assert their digital sovereignty. To be blunt: They’re trying things! Canada has often been slow to pass meaningful digital regulation, and quick to walk back policies that offend the Americans. The EU has enacted some really interesting regulations. Could Canada use “digital trade alignment” as cover to follow the EU’s lead? Read our analysis here. The Bottom Line Overall, when it comes to digital governance, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Digital policy is complicated and opaque, and it’s not enough to just pass a good law. Ongoing enforcement is a real challenge too. But this is one of the most pressing policy issues of our time, and with the accelerating deployment of AI systems, this issue is only going to become more urgent. It’s not as easy as striking a deal to sell soybeans, but digital governance is an area where Canada and the EU are natural partners, and it’s something we should be working on.
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