Vass Bednar is currently the Managing Director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute and the former Executive Director of McMaster University’s Master of Public Policy Program. She is also the co-author of The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians
This op-ed appears in the 2026 BetaKit Most Ambitious issue. Read more stories of the Canadian tech innovators strengthening our autonomy, security, and prosperity here.
How sovereign is sovereign enough?
In the past year, we’ve all learned that Canada’s ability to exercise self-determination rests on a shaky foundation. It is difficult to overstate our reliance on foreign-owned networks, as global events make that reliance untenable.
Authors Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman call these platforms and systems the “underground empire.” They are the hidden infrastructure of modern life—payment networks, app stores, domain names, semiconductors, and supply chains—all around us and often completely unnoticed.
That these systems are inconspicuous is exactly why they’re so powerful. When a foreign country controls the switches to your internet, your economy, and your cultural infrastructure, the threat of military invasion seems redundant; it can already throttle, surveil, exclude, delay, price-discriminate, or deplatform with impunity.
Minimum viable sovereignty
So, how can we extract our country from this weaponized economic and technological integration? Do we build a Canadian internet? A Canadian international-payments system? Canadian subsea cables and Canadian social networks? Do all Canadian computers and smartphones need to run on MapleOS, the sovereign software alternative?
A digital wall around Canada would be prohibitively expensive, and it probably wouldn’t work. Prime Minister Mark Carney said at Davos that “a world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.” Our goal should be resilience and strength, not greater fragility.
But Canada can’t stand still. Maybe we need to start thinking in terms of minimum viable sovereignty.
Every entrepreneur understands the idea of a minimum viable product: the simplest version of a product that lets you test with real users. Sometimes the best way to tackle an ambitious project is to start small, build, and then test.
We know that better alternatives are possible, and we know they are now necessary.
Vass Bednar, Canadian Shield
Across every aspect of our digital economy, we should carefully map our dependencies and ask ourselves, “What’s our simplest collaborative path to self-reliance?”
We’ve seen a version of what this could look like in the Defence Industrial Strategy, published by the federal government. In the document, Ottawa lays out a “Build-Partner-Buy” framework for Canadian defence capacity. Where we need to assert full control over a system or technology, we build it ourselves. Where we can’t build it ourselves, or collaboration makes more sense, we partner with trusted allies to build together. Where we have no other choice, we buy off the shelf. No matter what, we are working to ensure that we are on a pathway to greater self-reliance.
Canadian satellite operator Telesat is an example of what this can look like in a genuinely strategic industry: public backing helped secure communication capacity in a domain where markets alone might not deliver in the national interest. We should extend that approach across our financial and digital infrastructure and any other national dependency.
Governments can set priorities, procurement rules, and standards, and can signal demand, but they cannot build a more sovereign economy on their own. Digital self-reliance becomes tangible only when entrepreneurs treat our current dependencies as design problems and business opportunities. To be successful, they will need the support of Canadian investment capital and Canadian customers.
It will be a monumental effort, but minimum viable sovereignty does not require total control over every layer of every single system. It requires securing enough domestic capacity, ownership, optionality, and exit power so Canada isn’t helpless when foreign-controlled systems fail or turn hostile.
We know that better alternatives are possible, and we know they are now necessary. Together, we can make sovereignty the new status quo. In the pages of this issue, you’ll find companies helping to lead the way.
The opinions and analysis expressed in the above article are those of its author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of BetaKit or its editorial staff. It has been edited for clarity, length, and style.
Read how we selected Canada’s Most Ambitious, and meet this year’s honourees here.
BetaKit is the official media partner of Toronto Tech Week.
READ BETAKIT MOST AMBITIOUS 2026
In the 21st century, there is no sovereignty without technology.
Meet the Canadian innovators strengthening our nation’s autonomy, security, and prosperity in BetaKit Most Ambitious.
BetaKit is the official media partner of Toronto Tech Week.