Tech, procurement and digital autonomy

In a changing geopolitical landscape, Canada needs independence along three axes: Economic autonomy, which comes from building and buying domestic services; informational sovereignty, so our sensemaking as a nation is resilient; and technological autonomy, from a tech stack we control.

The economic lever is clear: Canada spends $26B a year on cloud and SaaS solutions, and three foreign-owned companies operate 85% of Canada’s public cloud. If just 4% of that spending went to Canadian firms, it would represent a billion dollars in domestic revenue. But buying Canadian solutions is about more than just in-border data or economic growth, and procurement is becoming instrument of national security.

The government has a real role to play in this shift. Not only is public procurement a vote of confidence in domestic providers, it's a policy that can advance Canadian technology, particularly in areas like AI, quantum encryption, and on-demand computing. So how does the public sector navigate the new rules of procurement while maintaining access to the latest technologies? In this conversation, FWD50 co-chair Alistair Croll and Micrologic's Robert Michon explore the new realities of a domestic tech stack, hybrid approaches, and the policy changes needed to navigate a changing world.