**‘We've seen over the years that there's a growing disconnect between citizens and government,’ says Technation CEO Kevin d’Entremont. / SUBMITTED PHOTO**

The biggest threat facing Canada's technology sector isn't a shortage of innovation, it's a shortage of clarity especially around the question of digital sovereignty, says Kevin d’Entremont, president and CEO of Technation, the national tech industry association.

“It's the biggest unknown,” he told Means & Ways. “Sovereignty is defined in many ways by many countries. In the absence of strong definitions and concrete plans, you have multiple definitions and that makes it very challenging to try and navigate. Having pragmatic discussions may be less about sovereignty and more about solving specific problems in a bottom-up fashion. That could be more productive and help advance the discussion.”

As the world rushes toward AI adoption and cloud infrastructure, data sovereignty has become an issue that governments and businesses are tackling. The challenge, according to a Government of Canada white paper on the issue, is that “as long as a cloud service provider (CSP) that operates in Canada is subject to the laws of a foreign country, Canada will not have full sovereignty over its data. This is because there remains a risk that data stored in the cloud could be accessed by another country.”

The quicker we resolve it, the better, d’Entremont said. “The tech sector has been supporting businesses in safeguarding data, in enabling commerce, in enabling data to flow from one jurisdiction to the next in a safe way,” he said. “Those tools, those processes, those systems are the things we should focus on, and we're starting to move down that path. Speed is going to be our friend in terms of addressing this, because this is a quickly evolving and always volatile political or geopolitical environment.”

Prior to joining Technation in October 2025, d’Entremont served as a partner in McKinsey’s Public Sector practice. He also previously led business development at Accenture’s Canadian federal practice and as Executive Director of Canada’s Government Technology Event — GTEC. As an entrepreneur, he also owned and operated a technology and business events company where he founded several high-profile B2B and B2C events. With more than 25 years of experience in the sector, he said tech underpins all sectors of Canada’s economy from retail, natural resources, education, health and more.

Tech is a driver of productivity in Canada

“Our sector itself is about 10% of our GDP, our productivity in Canada,” he said. “You could make an argument that tech is a major, major contributor, but also a driver of productivity in Canada.”

He said his message to government is: “We've been there before. We've seen some of these problems in industry. We can help bring solutions to unpack the complex challenges.”

One of those solutions is “to move from AI talking or digital talking to digital doing,” he said about the long-awaited AI strategy from the federal government. “I would love to see signs of a roadmap of next steps. That would help businesses know where investments are going to be named, to understand where programs are going to be rolled out and industry can make appropriate investments so that we can track the technology.”

“We’ve been there before. We’ve seen some of these problems in industry. We can help bring solutions to unpack the complex challenges.”

— KEVIN D'ENTREMONT, PRESIDENT & CEO, TECHNATION

He said the AI strategy needs to also answer a question that has grown more urgent amid ongoing trade pressures: where does Canada stand on AI within its international agreements?

“For companies that are looking to potentially export to other markets outside of the United States, or even within the United States — what's our position going to be on that?” he asked.

D’Entremont also said that modernizing government procurement needs to be addressed. He described it as the critical link between policy ambition and real-world service delivery.

When procurement fails, he said, ordinary Canadians pay the price not just through wasted spending, but through a widening gap between citizens and the services they depend on.

You don’t have a choice in government

“We've seen over the years that there's a growing disconnect between citizens and government,” he said, referring to when services fail. “If you are dealing with a bank and you don't have a good service experience, you probably change banks. Same with the telecom provider. You don't have a choice in government.”

That absence of choice, he argued, makes it all the more important that government gets procurement right — because how contracts are structured ultimately shapes how services get delivered.

“It's where the rubber hits the road in terms of service delivery,” he said. “The risk long-term is that you have Canadians that are more disconnected from government services that they're going to need as we continue to move forward in a world that's more complex and volatile. Governments are going to need to intervene and help more often, and I think that procurement is core to making sure that that bond stays tight going forward.”

The Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

M&W: In Technation’s pre-budget submission, you recommended that the Government of Canada make targeted strategic investments to accelerate the adoption of infrastructure capacity, building and commercialization of artificial intelligence across government and industry, positioning Canada as a global leader in responsible AI innovation. What does that look like to you?

KD: We have an adoption issue in Canada. Canada lags other countries. We're about 12% of adoption in Canada, and a pretty high number of SMEs — which are 90% of our economy in Canada or greater — are not looking at AI as a primary economic driver or focus for them. I think it's 30% plus in the United States that are adopting AI. Other countries are even higher and the risk for us, if we don't adopt AI quickly enough — the opportunity is going to quickly pass us by. So what we would like to see in terms of opportunities for business would be funding incentives, practical measures for companies to embrace and adopt AI.

I'd love to see government as a model user of AI, de-risking some of those workflows, so that companies that might not be the first wave of users of AI start to see the potential and adopt it. And it'll also have an impact on the sectors that government serves, be it healthcare or mining or agriculture.

M&W: How important is AI to our economic growth? You talked about how Canada is lagging other countries. Why does it matter?

KD: Global GDP could go up by 14% by 2030. In Canada, that equates to just under $300 billion in economic opportunity. So it's pretty significant, but it's also transversal. It affects every sector. In keeping with the thought that tech enables business and government, it has the potential to positively impact or disrupt sectors so it's critical at this point for us to not just observe and watch AI, but actually start embracing and using AI so that we can really see where the opportunities are. We're 10% of the global workforce for AI research in Canada. The top research capacity is in Canada, but for some reason, we're low on adoption. We need to move from research and understanding to applying it and using it so that we can actually leverage it for greater Canadian productivity.

M&W: There are concerns about data sovereignty, privacy and environmental impacts of mass AI adoption. How do we mitigate these concerns? What's your role and what's Technation’s or the industry’s role in addressing these concerns?

KD: I've been in technology or around technology going on 30 years. I don't think that we've seen such a fundamental shift, like a significant paradigm shift in the tech space. We're going to have to take a detailed look at realistically where can Canada succeed? Where can Canada control what it does with its data? And where must it control what it does with its data? How does it secure access to global systems that help or enable economic growth? Where can we depend on those or rely on those systems? And what are the dependencies? What are the criteria that we're going to create that are going to govern how we approach this going forward?

M&W: Your PBS also recommended that the Government of Canada modernize public sector procurement practices to drive efficiency for Canadian taxpayers and improve service delivery outcomes for Canadians. Why is this important?

KD: Global public sector procurement is about a $15 billion market. In Canada, science and tech procurement is about $16 billion and core tech procurement, like IT procurement, is around $7 billion. The Government of Canada is the largest buyer. They buy about half of that and the rest of it is spread across the provinces. So it's a significant driver of economic productivity. If the procurement isn't transparent, consistent, predictable, then, you have a couple problems.

One is, companies won’t engage and we have a declining share of wallet across the potential suppliers. We will have a few suppliers controlling significant parts of the spend, which doesn't enable competition and doesn't necessarily get to the best price or best value for money.

What we've seen in recent years is a lot of introspection, at least federally. We have a web of rules that's very complex around procurement. Are there too many rules that should be simplified?

Would simplification help small and underserved businesses from having access, get better access to government RFPs and opportunities? I think so. We could also improve the consistency of how procurements are executed. There are 106 departments across the government of Canada plus a whole bunch of crown corporations and special operating agencies, and a similar model exists in every province. So there's hundreds of institutions, and each one may operate with some variation.

If we could have national procurement frameworks, for example, apply once and qualify once, but be able to spread the value across the country, you'd start to see a little bit more transformational impact.

There needs to be more training within government on how you deal with industry. What are the main drivers and incentives for industry? How do I get to the best combination of price and technical capability? And then from an industry standpoint — this is where Technation can play a role too — is how do we educate the marketplace on not just coming with your features and benefits of a business solution but actually solving a problem for government?

M&W: Given the geopolitical shifts in our trade partnerships, there's a push to Buy Canadian. How realistic is this when it comes to the tech sector?

KD: We convened just in the last month, over 500 business leaders on the topic with government to start unpacking what are the needs of Canadian companies? What are the capabilities that Canada can engage? And what are the risks? We have a globally integrated technology ecosystem and Canada is a unique provider with unique value in that ecosystem. The more opportunities we can create for Canadian content, industry by-and-large will get behind that. More partnerships between companies, so that there's not one throat to choke on any given contract or opportunity, but rather a shared responsibility where small, midsize and large companies all have skin in the game and have growth and value to add is a good thing. Where we need to go next is really defining what are those specific workflows in areas that we need to be sovereign and handled within Canada and where can we use other policies that exist, that have existed for years, to manage Canadian content and security and access and trust both for personnel and for technology? Because not all skill sets in Canada are going to be scalable globally, and if we are to build it in Canada, because we want to build it in Canada, that's going to cost more and we have to have a computation around value for money in that case.

M&W: What are you hearing from your members or business leaders about how the trade negotiations and trade uncertainty are affecting the tech sector?

KD: Our sector in Canada has been very fortunate because of our geographic position to be very tied to the United States. What we get is a combination of nervousness around the U.S. relationship and the need for that relationship and that integration to continue because it is a very significant focus of current customers. But I also think there's some excitement with these new trade agreements. There's some excitement around looking at other markets.

M&W: What is keeping you up at night?

KD: Early in my career, Canada was known as a best in class country for the use of technology, largely for government services and we kind of fell off the mark. We were the early adopters. The early adopters broke every rule in the book and found ways to implement systems to digitize processes. We became a leader and we've been saddled with tech debt almost since, and it's gotten to the point in Canada, where we have significant technology debt that we need to resolve. Current events are starting to compromise our ability to deal with that. So what keeps me up at night? It’s how do we actually become or remain best-in-class in technology in the context of this constant uncertainty? That's why my earlier points focused on what are the plans? What are the steps? What are the action items? What timeframe? By when? Who owns it? There are more questions unfortunately than answers at this time. I think everybody's feeling the same pressure in industry and government, but I'm energized by the idea of being part of the answer.