Sentinel R&D co-founder and CEO Kath Intson thinks that Canada’s definition of sovereignty needs more precision.
On stage at CIX Summit Wednesday morning in Toronto, the defence technology entrepreneur argued that the country is “starting to get real wishy-washy” with how it defines sovereignty amid the defence gold rush.
“It’s not enough to just onshore some other company’s capability and call it Canadian.”
“We’re defining things that are nice to have, or simply copies, … as being sovereign, and that’s not what sovereignty is,” Intson said during a panel discussion featuring defence and dual-use startups looking to support Canada’s push to ensure the country’s security and sovereignty.
As geopolitical volatility has forced Canada to reduce its economic and military dependence on the US and other nations, the federal government has promised to invest heavily in defence after decades of neglect, and sovereignty has become a hot political buzzword.
Panel moderator and Canadian SHIELD Institute managing director Vass Bednar noted that, in the process, the word has also become “vague and meaningless.”
Intson said her Hamilton-based defence tech startup, which makes military drones, defines sovereignty as “the power and authority of a country to govern itself and defend itself.”
Fellow panellist Craig McLellan offered an even more focused definition. “It’s all about the kill switch and the ability to recover from the kill switch,” he said, referring to the potential remote disabling of key infrastructure, such as cloud services, by other countries or foreign companies.
McLellan is the founder and CEO of ThinkOn, a Toronto-based cloud service provider that is part of a four-company consortium seeking to sell sovereign AI infrastructure to the feds.
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McLellan argued that Canadian businesses and investors are not buying from or backing Canadian companies enough, and it’s “hollowing out” Canada’s sovereign capability. “You’ve got to support the home team,” he said.
“When it comes to buying Canadian, as somebody who’s very familiar with the Statistics Canada Inter-Corporate [Ownership] database, having the word Canada after your name doesn’t count, and shouldn’t count, but does count—and there’s something that we could do about that, too,” Bednar quipped.
Intson noted that until recently, “defence tech was not sexy” in Canada. She claimed banks and investors would not take Sentinel’s calls. This led the startup to go to Ukraine, where it has been working to supply drones to help the country’s military fight the Russian invasion.
“We knew that Canada would come back once we had proven ourselves outside of Canada.”
In addition to buying more Canadian products, McLellan argued that Canada needs to ensure that it retains its perception “as the most trustworthy nation on the planet” to ensure success.
“We will know that we’ve succeeded if we maintain our position in the current world order,” Intson added. “That’s what’s at stake here.”
To do that, Intson thinks Canada needs to focus on building new, unique tech companies for all of NATO, not just OpenAI, Nvidia, or Anduril for Canada. “It’s not enough to just onshore some other company’s capability and call it Canadian,” she said.
Feature image courtesy Elevate.