Digital sovereignty in Canada is a practical question and your Gmail account is the starting point. You have probably used it for years without thinking about which country’s laws govern it, who can access it under a subpoena, or what happens if the relationship between Canada and the US shifts in ways that affect your data. That possibility has started to feel less theoretical.

What does it feel like to care about something you never had to protect before? Most people woke up the morning Cloudflare went down with no idea that company existed, or that it was running most of their daily internet. Eleven million people in the UAE had a more serious version of that moment when Iran drone-attacked three data centers. The Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity has confirmed Canada is on that same target list.

The cloud turned twenty years old this month and the Canadian conversation about owning a piece of it is just getting started. A hyperscaler with a maple leaf on it does not exist yet. The distance between now and that goal is the most interesting technology story this country has going right now.

Topics: digital sovereignty Canada, cloud data security, Canadian internet infrastructure, Iranian cyber threats Canada, data backup plan

GUEST: Carmi Levy

Originally aired on2026-03-16