Buying Canadian, Building Canadian
Owning the Rails of Public Life
Canada can’t outsource sovereignty. My keynote argues that trust in government is rebuilt when we own — and wherever possible, build—our core digital infrastructures. Civic tech isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a strategic capability. When public tools run on foreign platforms, we risk ceding control of public data (think CLOUD Act exposure) and slowing policy agility. Built-and-governed-in-Canada systems protect privacy, reinforce data sovereignty, and let governments prototype policy in weeks, not procurement cycles.
I’ll map where we can start now: child-care data as a real-time indicator for businesses, transparent rent dashboards, automatic building permitting, and labour-market tools that actually serve workers and employers. I’ll show how in-house capacity and smarter procurement shift us from “buying software” to building state capability, and outline what else we need: like standards, talent pipelines, and governance, so civic tools become national assets, not rented dependencies.
If we don’t own the code that runs public life, we don’t own the choices. Let’s buy Canadian, and build Canadian.
