The planning, construction, and operation of defense infrastructure all rely on digital systems. Winter conditions, extreme cold, and limited comfort resources make reliability even more important, and this reliability in the modern Arctic is delivered through underpinning technology. Radar networks, supply chains, personnel coordination, emergency response, and long term infrastructure projects all require stable digital tools and the capacity to maintain them.

All of this comes at a time when global interest in the Arctic is already growing. Climate change, increased activity from major nations, and ongoing political tensions are drawing even more attention to the region.

This shift reshapes the sovereignty equation where territorial control meets the role of technology. Governments cannot meaningfully assert sovereignty if they do not control the data, networks, digital infrastructure, and systems that support decision making in the region. Most aspects of Northern life and governance now depend on technology’s impact.

Technology now sits at the core of how defense, education, health care, emergency response, and government services are planned, coordinated, and managed, even when the services themselves are delivered in person.

If these critical systems are managed, hosted, or owned entirely outside the region, the North faces greater exposure. Federal partners will always play a critical and central role in funding and supporting technology, but long term sovereignty also depends on strengthening Northern Canada’s capacity to build, maintain, and govern the core digital systems that communities here rely on.

The Yukon is already home to locally-based innovators like Kryotek, a climate tech company developing Northern led solutions for monitoring, adaptation, and environmental resilience, and ALPHA-EL, which is advancing specialized environmental, wildlife and energy research from right here in the territory.

Strengthening and scaling this kind of locally grounded expertise is essential to ensuring the North can shape, govern, and sustain its own digital future.

This is why Arctic sovereignty can no longer be discussed as only a physical or geographic or military issue — it is a digital sovereignty issue. It is about who builds the systems, who maintains them, where the data lives, and who has the capability to respond when infrastructure fails or when conditions change.

For Northern regions like the Yukon, where we live and work, strengthening sovereignty means strengthening digital capacity on Northern terms, guided by Northerners and First Nations governments.