I thank you for your question.
First, let's talk for a moment about digital sovereignty and then I'll talk about the “bold” of what we need to do because they go together.
The most important thing I can say about digital sovereignty is that, foundationally, a country that does not have a policy, that cannot act and does not act to be able to control what we feel, how we act and what we see, is not governing. The foundation of sovereignty is the need to govern. When we don't do that, either because we have not enacted laws or because we have decided not to enact laws, that area is a vacuum and is taken up by others. In essence, we become colonized and we lose our rights. That is very problematic.
The interdependence and the interconnectedness we saw today with the outage was a good example. In Canada, the Canadian companies are affected by American cloud companies. We are affected by them not only in this way—in this interconnectedness—but also with respect to U.S. laws that govern what goes on with Canadian data. As a Canadian, I find that very troubling and very problematic.
The problem is that now in the trade negotiations, this has become a very important issue. After tariffs, the focus is trade. If you look at the terms in the fine print of the EU-U.S. deal, one-quarter of the terms is about digital. We have to be ready for that and I am afraid that we're not. I've written a paper on this. I've put it in the brief. It's called “Code Before Clause”. We must have our own code and our own approaches before we negotiate the digital ones, or we will find ourselves in terrible trouble.
With respect to a bold strategy, one of the most important things we can do is understand that we need to go outside of the old approaches of governments. We need not only to have whole-of-government, but to go outside to work with our provinces, our partners in the innovation community, the business community and the labour community. We must go far outside. For that I am calling for a trade czar or a high commissioner—someone who would be able to bring that together. We need a high commissioner for innovation as well. It's the two things.
I'm talking about exactly what Ms. Bednar has been talking about today. We need to do that. If we are going to succeed, we must understand that there is a new game. Think about how to deal with that boldly, but we need to have everything going with us inside. We have the capabilities, but we're not using them. That is my greatest concern.
I have spent the last three months and will spend the next three months not teaching in New York but working here in Canada to do capacity building inside Canada with anybody who will ask, so that we can build more, do more and be able to respond better to these very significant threats.