Tech leader John Ruffolo hopeful Canada will take digital sovereignty seriously

TORONTO – The trade war has awoken Canada to the need to protect its digital sovereignty and for the first time in awhile, John Ruffolo is optimistic the country will finally do something about it. 

“I was losing hope over the last couple of years because I was wondering whether we would ever get there,” said the founder of Maverix Private Equity and OMERS Ventures on stage at the Elevate tech conference on Wednesday.

“What I’ve noticed today is the political leaders, the business leaders, everyone is starting to sing the same song, so the message is being delivered.”

The unity is a byproduct of U.S. President Donald Trump’s antagonism toward Canada. Since the start of the year, Trump has been lashing out against his country’s one-time biggest ally with tariffs and threats to take over its northern neighbor. 

The aggression has every sector of Canada’s economy scrambling to protect itself, lest it be Trump’s next target.

The tech sector sees sovereignty as one of its best solutions.

“At its core, Canadian sovereignty means our ability to define our own future without foreign influence, to drive our agendas and our ambitions. That’s the foundation,” said Debbie Gamble, chief strategy and marketing officer at Interac Corp., who joined Ruffolo on stage.

“From there though, the conversation must extend into the digital world. Digital sovereignty asks who owns and controls the infrastructure, who owns the data, and who defines the rules for the emerging digital economy.”

Ruffolo said it’s been an important concept he was hoping would gain support for years, especially after the U.S. introduced the Cloud Act.

The 2018 legislation allows the U.S. to access data anywhere in the world as long as it is held in servers maintained by an American firm. If the country seeks the data, it doesn’t even need to inform the companies whose info is being accessed, he said.

“When I saw that, read that, I was extremely troubled,” Ruffolo said.

Others weren’t nearly as concerned. He recalled them saying, “That’s theoretical. Is that going to really happen?”

Recent events, like the trade war and Elon Musk threatening to turn off Starlink internet access to the Ukrainian military, have convinced Ruffolo it could.

“If Canada is not playing ball with the United States from a trade negotiation perspective it is not so hard to assume that maybe Trump says, ‘You know what? Just shut Starlink down for an hour and let the Canadians quake in their boots,’” Ruffolo said.

“That is possible. Not saying it’s going to happen but that’s what sovereignty means.”

If Canada wants to protect itself from everything that can happen when a nation’s tech ecosystem is too reliant on a neighbour, Ruffolo said it needs to find ways to keep capital in the country. 

That could mean pension funds and banks investing in homegrown businesses and governments and companies buying from other domestic firms.

“It doesn’t mean that you do not invest globally, but every country in the world is starting to ringfence their own capital, including the United States, so we need that capital,” he said.

The country also needs to support its own businesses, which would help give them more access to customers and markets.

“The United States is a great example. They are proud to say buy American and yet we were scared to say buy Canada,” he said. “Right now, we need to be supporting our own companies in our own backyard and be proud about doing that.”

If the country doesn’t find ways to support itself, he said it risks being a branch plant economy to the U.S. or elsewhere.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2025.