Canada's digital future is governance before it's technology.
I am Paul Desjardins, founder and CEO of Move Add Change. I help boards and leadership teams govern technology, AI and digital risk. I help data centre owners assess and mitigate emerging physical risks and I lead two national initiatives on Canada's digital sovereignty.
Start a conversationSee the advisory workWhat I do
Advisory
Board governance and strategic advisory for SME innovators in technology, internet service providers and mining companies, in Canada and Latin America.
Kinetic Protection
A modular service that defines the physical threat a data centre must withstand, drones included, measures the gap, and plans and assures the work to close it, under the Kinetic Protection Standard, KPS-1.
Initiatives
SAGE and the Digital Rangers Network, two complementary initiatives in development for Canada's defence and sovereignty: one would sense what happens across Canada's remote territory, and the other would process that information sovereignly and securely.
Advisory
I help at a point of change: forming a first board, preparing for public markets, adopting AI, or entering a market where relationships decide the outcome. I have spent forty years in enterprise technology, and I sit on the board of the Ontario Centre of Innovation.
Board governance and formation
I design and build boards. For a company forming its first board or preparing for public markets, that means the full governance architecture: the board charter, the committees and their charters, the core policies, a skills matrix, a governance calendar and a budget to run the board, taken through to formal adoption. I give technology, AI and cybersecurity the same weight as finance and compliance.
Strategic and digital advisory
I work alongside CEOs on AI adoption, digital strategy and market entry. My first question is always what has to be true for this to work with your people, in your operating reality. The roadmap follows from the answer.
Where I serve now
Ontario Centre of Innovation
Board member since February 2024, and a member of the AI Steering Committee. OCI is Ontario's agency for technology commercialization, SME growth and industry and academic collaboration, and it is accountable to the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.
Sierra Sun Group
Strategic advisor and incoming director since February 2026. I advise on board formation and governance, capital markets readiness, digital and AI strategy, and Indigenous community engagement. The company's operations are based in Lima, Peru.
North Bay is not where I'm from. It's what I'm from.
My father taught himself electricity and built a trades business in North Bay. My mother raised two boys on a teacher's salary. My family's relationship with Dokis First Nation on the Upper French River goes back half a century.
At Ontario Northland I helped bring the World Wide Web to Moosonee, Moose Factory and Temagami. That formation is what I carry into every boardroom and advisory engagement.
Recent work
Sierra Sun Group: building a first board
How mac designed the complete board governance system for a Peruvian mining group preparing for public markets. The package runs from the board charter to a budget model for running the board, with more than twenty advisories on the decisions governance raises.
Writing
Governance
Who decides what a data centre must withstand?
In four days this month, drone strikes put two of a large technology company's data centres out of service and damaged a third. Canada's standards leave the threat a data centre must withstand to its owner. A board that depends on one should know who made that decision.
What a board's digital, AI and cybersecurity committee should do
Most boards know they must oversee technology risk. Fewer have decided who does it, how often, and against what standard. This is how I set it up for a first board.
Essays
The unexpected edge Canadian companies bring to Latin America
There is a competitive advantage sitting inside most Canadian resource and technology companies considering Latin American operations. It does not show up on a balance sheet. It rarely comes up in investor presentations....
North Bay is not where I'm from. It's what I'm from.
A personal essay on formation, obligation, and what Northern Ontario still means, and still asks for.
The future is yours. Let's build it.
If you are forming a board, preparing for public markets, adopting AI or entering a new market, I would like to hear about it. Send me a note here, or use the details below.
- Email: paul.desjardins@moveaddchange.ca
- Phone: 416 207-9022
- LinkedIn: Paul Desjardins