Sovereign by Design: Strategic Options for Canadian AI Sovereignty

A report from the AI Competitiveness Project at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy (University of Toronto), authored by Senior Fellows Sean Mullin and Jaxson Khan. It offers a systematic, layer-by-layer assessment of Canada's position across the AI technology stack and warns that critical gaps in cloud infrastructure and compute hardware leave the country vulnerable at a moment of geopolitical uncertainty.

The report frames sovereignty as "freedom from coercion, not digital isolationism or technological self-sufficiency." It identifies Canadian strengths — clean energy attractive to data-centre investment, valuable public and private datasets, globally competitive firms such as Cohere, and a strong open-source ecosystem — alongside acute weaknesses, most notably limited domestic control over foundation models and cloud infrastructure and the extraterritorial legal reach that undermines data-residency protections.

Its central argument is that "the architecture is not yet settled": Canada should make deliberate infrastructure and standards choices during this formative period to reduce foreign leverage while building sovereign capacity through coalition-building and hybrid technology strategies.