Podcast: Canada’s Post-Election Outlook On Tech Policy

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

Canadian political leaders are in a precarious moment. Fresh off the resignation of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ascendancy of his successor, new Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Mark Carney, the nation faces a brewing trade war with the United States and a deteriorating relationship with its president, Donald Trump.

In addition to managing those global tensions, Canadian leaders have a long to-do list on tech policy, including figuring out the nation’s approach to artificial intelligence and online harms. How will the new Carney-led government in Canada navigate those issues?

I spoke to three experts to get a sense:

• Renee Black is founder of goodbot, where she works on preventing harmful disinformation and bias, and establishing frameworks that protect digital rights.
• Maroussia Lévesque is a doctoral candidate and lecturer at Harvard Law School, an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center, and a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation.
• Vass Bednar is a public policy entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology and public policy.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

Renee, Vass, Maroussia, thank you all so much for joining us. I wanted to start off by offering a little refresher for folks who maybe have not been as tuned in to Canadian politics. Last year, of course, was a historic year in global elections, and that roughly half the world's population headed to the polls, but still, this year there are dozens more happening. And earlier this year, we saw a major changing of the guard in Canada with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing that he would be stepping down as both prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party. Mark Carney, his successor, went on to defeat the conservative party leader in the election, though his party failed to claim an outright majority government, meaning they'll need to work with other parties to enact their policies.

This all occurred just weeks after President Trump had issued his tariffs against most countries around the world, including Canada, tariffs of up to 25%. And so certainly this loomed over the elections, but I wanted to start off asking, whenever there's a global election these days, we tend to ask to what extent did technology play a role? Whether it be social media platforms, increasingly, we're talking about the role of AI in elections. Renee, I wanted to get your thoughts on that. To what extent do you feel like it was a factor in how this snap election played out in Canada?

Renee Black:

Canada has not had, historically, the same kinds of monitoring efforts on elections as we've seen in the US, and so this was actually one of the first times that we'd had a really significant coordinated civil-society-led monitoring effort. That was looking at the networks of social media actors that were working to essentially disrupt the election, looking at the role of generative AI, and of course, this was all happening in the context in which the US has dismantled its disinformation unit with which Canada had coordinated. Last July, there was a coordination to identify a very specific botnet campaign called Meliorator.

We didn't have that same cooperation this time around, so the role of civil society organizations, academic organizations, was even more important, and certainly there was a lot more. We did see more generative AI. We did see more groups starting to show up, trying to influence the sentiment of the election. I think for the first time we're seeing disinformation, in a very meaningful way, trying to influence the discourse in Canada, towards an American agenda. Overall, though, I think the fact that there was such a resistance to attacks on Canada's sovereignty, I think that ended up probably having a big counter-effect in the potential role that disinformation and online influencers might have otherwise played.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

Vass, how big a role, if any, do you think these different technology services played in the election?

Vass Bednar:

I think a significant role. You mentioned that sea change from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he almost represented or coincided with the best parts of the internet, right? Techno-optimism. He was seen as a leader that was harnessing social media platforms and accessing Canadians in ways that were au courant at the time. And now Prime Minister Mark Carney was treated to viral deepfakes of him announcing a car ban before the year 2000. So I would echo Renee in that it's been such an uncanny valley with the threat of tariffs, and that scrambling, and a new geopolitical order, that we saw reshuffling, real reshuffling of the deck in terms of priorities and the digital policy, tech policy agenda fell maybe in priority or people's consciousness.

One tiny thing to shout out that I feel like also went under the radar was, it was the conservative candidate who, in their platform, suggested that the government would no longer use tax dollars to promote government policy on some of these social media platforms. And that's always been an interesting incongruency, right, where, how do you bring forward a tech accountability agenda when you're also buying ads on Facebook, when Facebook is turning off news for Canadians, right? How do you reconcile that with... I think people know, you got to go where people are, et cetera, et cetera. But I actually thought that was a bold and underappreciated values-based stance to take.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

So, as you just alluded to, this was a notable election in that the Online News Act, which had passed in Canada, prompted this retaliation from Meta, in that they blocked news on the site. And so this was national action happening where there was restriction on what news content folks could see online. What did you all perceive about how that unfolded? Vass, did you have any thoughts on that?

Vass Bednar:

There was some great reporting from a media startup that's Canadian called The Logic, and though formal news media was not able to be shared on Meta platforms, a whole bunch of stuff masquerading as news was. Outlets, it's called Canada Proud, right, which is known to be associated with a certain sect of the conservatives, that people were still receiving information on these platforms related to the election, but it was of comparatively lower quality and more influenced. So that is something I think that's notable and that we really have to keep in mind going forward. It's just a reminder of the platform's power. We're seeing other platforms now in Canada resist parliamentary hearings related to the digital streaming tax and sort of other elements, where they're saying, "We're not even going to show up. We're not even going to participate, and what should Canada do when our parliamentary processes are being taunted like that and not even indulged?" It's going to be interesting to see.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

So this was a snap election. It did not have the long lead-up that say the US 2024 elections did in the same way. Vass, you alluded to the fact that you did not think digital policymaking was necessarily at the forefront of the campaign. Maroussia, I was curious if that was your impression as well, and if there was anything that you think we did gleam about how Carney, the Liberal Party might approach digital governance in these coming years.

Maroussia Lévesque:

Sure. If we look at the actual mandate letter of our new prime minister, there is mention of artificial intelligence there. So we see that's in the high-level agenda setting, AI is going to be playing essential role here. The letter talks about the transformative nature of AI is creating opportunities for Canadians. It's hints to the future of work as being a potential tripwire that we need to pay close attention to. And then it also talks about how the government is going to be using AI in its own internal processes, highlighting productivity and focusing on results rather than spending.

So I would say that, in the outcome of this election, AI is set to play an important role in the next few years, and in fact, we have a separate, new AI ministry. So this is a first. This is probably in reaction to the backlash against the first round of proposed AI regulations, which was housed within one department that was focused on industry and innovation. And as we all know, AI is partly about industry and innovation, but it's also about rights, it's also about the environment. It has all these other dimensions that were not properly addressed in the way that the first batch of AI regulation was proposed. And so now we have this window of opportunity to try and shape AI regulation in a more holistic way that considers all the different dimensions that AI brings to the fore.

Vass Bednar:

I would just offer that I don't know that Carney is really forecasting an AI accountability agenda so much as positioning AI as economic development, right? When we're thinking of AI and work, every day, I'm refreshing looking for, okay, are we going to see something on algorithmic pricing and pricing transparency, algorithmic management of workers of all kinds, and we're just not quite there. And we didn't get a lot more detail in the Speech from the Throne, so people are still really looking ahead now to what's going to be, the fall economic statement is when we're going to get a more fulsome budget in Canada.

One other element that we see a lot of echoes of, the hot word in Canada right now, it starts with B and it's build, right? So we saw a kind of real echoing of what in the US or Carole Cadwalladr, Cadwalladr, from formerly the Guardian called the broligarchy. I understand bro is a pejorative. So let's just focus on the oligarchy part, but tech leaders in Canada, from firms of all sizes, organizing against Prime Minister Trudeau, right, and putting forward other ideas, other policy memos, to their credit, doing their best to be constructive and be in that idea space. But there's a lot of alignment in terms of, hey, the public service feels too big. We need to be more prudent with our spending.

Before this election, and part of what soured a lot of people, there are many reasons, on the former prime minister, was a proposed increase to capital gains taxation, which now every listener has fallen asleep, but let's just say, this was not previewed, consensus wasn't built and frankly people weren't ready to invest more in a Canada that they didn't feel was being well managed, had the right priorities. And that's a fight that's going to continue in Canada, whether or not we have a, quote, unquote, "Elon Musk of our own."

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

Renee, I saw you nodding in agreement there. Your thoughts?

Renee Black:

I guess I'd just add in, I think I agree with everything was just said, but there were moments where he would allude to things like the Online Harms Bill, and on the road he would ode to very specific issues and incidents. And what I do hope that this signaling of this bigger ministry and this bigger, hopefully, scope and the fact that the journalist in the role for this AI minister is playing both the role of widening the lens beyond just an industry lens, but also one that is going to be focused on communication with the public. That may be me being hopeful, naively, but I think that picking a journalist to take on that role signals a certain thing and I hope that that is that they're planning on doing more public engagement on the conversations AI so that we have a more robust public conversation on what policy should look like.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

We've alluded to a couple different pieces or attempts to pass regulation in this space. One being the Online Harms Act, the other being the, believe, the AI and Data Act, which took a similar risk-based approach to the EU's AI Act. Maroussia, I'd be curious to hear from you. Do you think, and I should say these are both attempts that have withered on the vine at this point, but do you expect that we'll see them return? And what lessons, if any, do you think the policymakers in Canada might take from prior attempts to pass these two pieces of regulation?

Maroussia Lévesque:

I expect some form of 2.0 attempt at AI regulation, different both in terms of form and substance. So, in terms of form, the first iteration was added last minute to a privacy bill, and that posed challenges in terms of logistics for people to be able to get their comments in time, and it also posed challenges if, in cases where people would want to support one and oppose the other. And so a formal separation between privacy, AI regulation, is perhaps something that's on the cards. That doesn't mean they're not linked. There needs to be interoperability between privacy and AI regulation, but a standalone AI bill in terms of form would probably be best, and one that is appropriately consulted beforehand.

I think one of the biggest problems with AIDA is that it failed to consult a lot of rights holders and stakeholders, including indigenous people, and there's arguably a constitutional duty to consult indigenous peoples, and there certainly is a duty with regards to the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And so the failure to have nation-to-nation consultations was one of the shortcomings of the first iteration of the bill.

In terms of substance, you're right to point out that the Canadian bills resembled the European AI Act, but I would argue that it was perhaps even more diluted. I tend to think that even the AI Act gives companies significantly leeway. Too much leeway in my opinion, because when it comes to implementing it, companies often grade their own homework, and the first iteration of the Canadian bill was also very lenient in this way. One would hope that the subsequent efforts to regulate AI would implement robust independent third-party verification at the very least.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

Renee, what about the Online Harms Act? So we should say that was an effort to impose new duties on digital platforms, to basically take action against different types of harmful content. Do you think we'll see a revival? What are its prospects, and what would be your takeaways from years of efforts to advance this now?

Renee Black:

I guess what I would say is that I was always a little bit concerned with the way that the Online Harms Bill had been framed, in the sense that the scope of activities in which it is addressing is inadequate. It's focused a little bit too much downstream and not enough upstream from the incentives, looking at the incentives, and the behaviors, and the monetization that drive a lot of what ends up happening. And I think that as long as you are reacting to this more content-level approach, then you're constantly going to be in a reaction mode.

So how do we start to regulate the designs, the algorithms? And there was some language around duty of care, there was some look at transparency, but it was really, it felt more like an afterthought in the bill that ended up being ready to move ahead rather than the core. And I would really like to see a more intentional upstream approach getting more traction. There's this concept of monetization governance that I think is very interesting and I really would love to see that. Beyond that, I think we're also in a world where the kinds of issues that we are seeing are moving beyond social media, and social media was really the scope of the online harms platform. We're starting to see on consumer-facing AI tools, like Character.AI. And these tools are also having impacts that I think if we're starting out again, we can start to look at what are the common characteristics that these platforms have that are important? How do we regulate something in a wider lens of tools that maybe we couldn't have done in the last bill?

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

The flip side of some of this conversation, we've alluded to the innovation, push for innovation, and building that more anti-government approach. Part of a lot of the conversation now recently in Europe, we talked about the AI Act, is around this idea of the EuroStack and developing an internet infrastructure that is European and not dominated by American tech companies. Vass, I'd be curious to hear from you, I know you've written a lot about competition issues. How much are we hearing that sort of similar dialogue happening Canada? How is it the same? How is it different? How's that playing out?

Vass Bednar:

I'm fun at parties. I wish we saw more of this. Again, coming back to these official texts and foreshadowing in the Speech from the Throne, where we don't see the word online, we don't see the word, digital. So now all of these issues get recast in this geopolitical context, the US versus us. There do seem to be people who are very motivated, and more research, and activism, and advocacy around, okay, how do we link up cybersecurity, and defending Canada, and creating more of that independence and resilience in our tech stack? It's also a tough, sometimes a tough sell because it's so intangible, right? But we do see dual-use being tossed around in terms of if Canada's going to... Here are the two bugaboos in Canada, our productivity crisis, and I wish there was a scarier word than crisis because that's what it is in Canada, and also this push to increase our security spending, right, getting as high as 5% when we couldn't even meet 2%.

So if we don't think really carefully in Canada around where we can make really smart, dual-use investments in our sovereignty, in our security, then we'll fail there. But again, I feel so sorry. I feel like I'm a Debbie Downer who's... It's a magic eight-ball. There's lots of foreshadowing, but it's also a really rich time in Canada, right, of ideation, of putting things in the window, of rearticulating who we are, who we want to be, and that shock of how fragile these systems and supply chains really are and really were. The other element for Canada, when it comes to elements like the critical minerals debate, and our natural resources, and how we may be able to leverage them more in a more sophisticated way with new trading partners, is we often, the term is rip and ship. Is that embarrassing to say?

What investments are we willing to make in Canada? How is the state going to work with industry? Are we willing to be more patient, take longer to export some of the resources that we have, so that, again, we're able to capture more value and try to help grow the economy while also building that resilience? Again, I'm sorry if you woke up earlier for Maroussia on AI. I feel I always lull people to sleep, but I also want to offer you, Cristiano, something that is, it's an ambitious moment of opportunity in Canada, with a fragile government. We're still in that minority setting, which is very productive for the give and take, but you could also view that as, damn, it's going to slow us down because Prime Minister Sir Carney was hoping, anyone who won was hoping for the, quote, unquote, "strong mandate" so could just get going. And now people are very impatient. Oh, there's no budget this summer.

I just want to say, I'd rather a great budget in the fall that's thoughtful and has inputs than something that's rushed, and sloppy, and deficient, and then we're all yelling at each other all summer about how it sucks.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

Maroussia, you seem like you want to jump in. Go ahead.

Maroussia Lévesque:

Sure. Just to build on that, as I try to make the best case scenario, I think it's important to understand where we're at vis-a-vis the US and vis-a-vis the EU, because from a pragmatic standpoint, Canada's a middle power. We don't have a large economy to really do meaningful anti-monopoly enforcement, for instance, but we do have a valuable, quote, unquote, "client base" and we are home to really important fundamental research in AI and ML. And we're at a moment where a lot of researchers are not sure they want to stay in the US because people are basically getting kidnapped off the streets. And so there is a silver lining for Canada to seize the opportunity and try to get the talent in or back in Canada, from an industrial policy standpoint. And the bigger vision could be, let's not do industrial policy and regulation in silo, which is basically what we've been doing or we've geared both towards innovation.

We're at a moment where we're facing a really pressing environmental crisis that AI is accelerating. We have cooler temperature, cooler climates that could be used for greener, more sustainable data centers. We can have a broader conversation about degrowth, but right now, AI models are being built in Memphis with basically natural gas or power plants that were scheduled to be decommissioned because they caused one of the biggest accidents in the US, are being put back online to power data centers in the US. So, can we think about a greener way to train models? Maybe not inference because you need less latency. But there's a vision there for greener industrial policy that also draws from our longstanding tradition as human rights, and rights-promoting, and respecting practices.

That's our calling card at an international level. It's not our army, it's not necessarily our economy, it's the Lester B. Pearsons of this world who have championed a certain approach which puts human rights forward. And so can we think about AI regulation that is actually rights-respecting and rights-promoting, that gives meaningful protections to impacted people rather than just carte blanche to the AI firms developing these products? I think this is a time to really think about AI policy holistically, both on the industrial policy side and the regulation side. We have this new ministry that's a blank slate, so there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for that ministry to do things differently.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

Vass, just a couple of minutes ago, you talked about some of the rhetoric around us versus the US. I think that's a good segue to talk about the proverbial elephant in the room. Some of the ratcheting trade tensions with the US. There was, some might call, a tense Oval Office meeting last month between President Trump and Carney where Trump talked about wanting to make Canada a 51st state and talking about not wanting to back off tariffs. Renee, I'd be curious to hear from you, how do you think this will impact digital policymaking in Canada. What is some of the trickle-down of that on some of these efforts we're talking about?

Renee Black:

I think what we've started to see a little bit is Carney trying to telegraph an attempt to start to build relationships with the other smaller countries that are more like Canada or that share Canadian values. His first trip abroad was to France and to the UK. That was very much I think in response to the tariffs and themselves. I can imagine, because EU is facing some of the similar pressures Canada is facing around trying to roll back or limit the scope of AI policy, that there's some overlapping interest in trying to make sure that we can work collectively in some ways.

So when I think about technology sovereignty, I think about this in a couple of different ways. It's the tech stack that we have. It's the policies that we have and it's also like the data flow and the localization side, and there's this big conversation around what sovereignty means. And I think that for Canada, that's going to be a bigger part of the conversation, but I think, clearly Canada's not in a position on its own to do a lot of this, the big heavy lifting of what is involved in having a truly sovereign digital ecosystem, especially in the internet economy. And I don't think it should try to anyway. I think that the better way forward would be to be trying to develop good partnerships and develop a more balanced portfolio of companies with which we actually are buying their infrastructure or leveraging their resources in different ways.

So right now, we're just far too dependent on what is being made available in the US. So how do we diversify that, in a way? So I really hope, myself, that there is going to be this intentional strategy of building this robust relationship with a lot of the smaller powers with whom we share common interests and values.

Vass Bednar:

When our premier in Ontario, sorry, I'm in Ontario right now, when Premier Ford threatened the US that we would turn off some of the hydroelectricity, right, it's like, I feel that I keep imagining these cyberpunk futures because I'm like... Maroussia, you're best-case scenario. I'm always worst-case scenario. What happens when cloud gets turned off in Canada, right? What happens when we've seen Starlink satellites... Canada, infamous for its somewhat closed telecommunication system, is actually quite welcoming of foreign-owned low Earth orbit satellites. Separate issue, but a competition issue, right? What happens when those elements become manipulated? Because that's so much more at the forefront, everything now, even newer policy announcements we might hear from Prime Minister Carney, is going to be in that context of, is that something we are truly threatening or that we're going to walk away from? Because in the past, a lot of our tech regulation has also happened in the context of our trade agreements, right?

Will the digital streaming tax move forward? Will we finally implement a digital sales tax that we proposed years and years ago, and then tried to go at it with the OECD, or is that a bargaining chip at a negotiation table? Ditto, elements of what online harms 2.0 could be, and other elements where the state continues to struggle to introduce what they see as optimal platform accountability and regulation. And at the same time, while that's happening, those leaders, those kind of very strong, at least back to influencers, we don't have the robust influencer ecosystem that you see in the US in terms of alt media. Of course, people exist and have their audiences, and I'm challenging myself to learn more about them and learn from them because I think it's easier for us maybe not to, or I'm a generation away from it. But will our tech sector truly be on board with that vision of a more sovereign and resilient Canada, that is maybe building more in-house or imposing, frankly the state imposing itself to make sure that the market is more free and fair?

That's a big question going forward, and I think it'll be really interesting to see because, as Maroussia said, sure, it's tougher for us to... We haven't seen as much action on the largest technology firms, but we have seen a more robust and activist competition bureau overall. But yeah, let's see.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

So speaking of threats, there was a lot made here in the US about the tech executives sitting behind President Trump at his inauguration. Perhaps more consequentially, in recent months, we've seen an escalation from the administration against foreign tech rules. We saw the US trade rep issue a report that took aim at a lot of global tech regulations, including in Canada. More recently, of course, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issuing the threat against foreign officials that are responsible for the censorship of Americans. Certainly something you could envision implicating folks involved in the Online Harms Act, another regulation. Maroussia, I'd be curious to hear from you, do you think that the response in Canada will be that this could have a chilling effect on some of these efforts to pass regulations in this space, or do you think it will be more defiance in the face of that?

Maroussia Lévesque:

I think it's too early to tell. Canada is really between a rock and a hard place, and as the US is our largest trading partner, so not one we are willing to upset without a clear off-ramp. I made the best case scenario earlier on, I agree with Vass that we need to be pragmatic about the geopolitical tensions, and the situation in which Canada finds itself is one where I think we would really need to do a good job at diversifying our trading partners before we can afford to poke the bear, so to speak. And the challenge is, how do you buy time in an area where the window of opportunity to shape and to make AI regulation is closing? Because if we don't regulate it ourselves, we're just basically going to be regulated by other jurisdictions, and at a time when the US has made it clear that it wishes to engage in a deregulatory approach with regards to AI, with drill, baby, drill or build, baby build. I don't know. I think that it is going to be a challenge to have really robust AI regulation in this context.

That said, it could be things that are perhaps a little bit more under the radar, things like robust technical standards that are technically voluntary, but maybe you have a tax credit if you comply with those standards. So something that's enabling rather than restricting, but has the same end impact of shaping the behavior of companies. So I don't have a silver bullet, and I recognize that the geopolitical environment is tough. That's why people get elected. They get elected, and this government got elected to face this really hard problem of dealing with the US. So that's what Canadians expect it to do. The citizens expect Canada to find narrow paths that promote our interests and at the same time do not stir direct confrontation. So AI regulation is going to have to do just that.

Vass Bednar:

I think what's frustrating now in Canada is that in this moment where we need to be pushing ourselves and each other, and being more imaginary, and thoughtful, and maybe moving a tiny bit faster, and maybe all the cliches, right, Overton windows are moving, windows of opportunity. We are falling back. We're still, we're very safe and cautious when it comes to policymaking, right? Most of what we call policymaking in Canada is some form of policy taking. We love to do a jurisdictional scan and mash together what a couple of other people are doing. But one of the big things that Prime Minister Carney has done and moved quickly on, which is great, is reducing interprovincial trade barriers. This is something we've been talking about in Canada since the '90s. I personally think a lot of the proposed benefits from this have been wildly overstated, but hey, let's view it as solving a coordination problem with premiers and working together on economic challenges.

If that's the precedent that the new prime minister is setting, then that's actually really cool, but if it represents a safety dance of, hey, everyone, let's press delete on a few regulations that we feel are getting in the way, and we've lost their sense of historical context, and some are the results of weird lobbying, then that's actually not being the best Canada we can be. That's just technical policy debt that someone's finally tidying up.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

Renee, your thoughts?

Renee Black:

Yeah, I guess I have... I've always wondered, in this moment in time, because of the way in which AI impacting so many lives, so it's affecting careers, it's affecting creators, it's affecting privacy, it's affecting online elections, elections and online harms, all these different areas in which it's having an impact. It just strikes me that there is a need for more public engagement in policymaking processes, and not only... And in that respect, online harms was better than the AI and then AIDA in the last government, but neither of them I think were good processes, in so far as, yes, there were some civil society organizations that wrote open letters and participated in consultations. In the case of the online safety bill, certainly much more so in the later stages of that process, but I would really love to see a more proactive approach that really is engaged where people are at, because-

Yeah, go ahead.

Vass Bednar:

If AIDA were the result of the perfect, most ideal version of consulting on policy, would we accept it? Would we vote it into law? That's the thought experiment we have to do, right? The trade-off, imperfect consultation, what are those windows? Is it sometimes a bit more productive to put forward a proposal and consult on that instead of starting tabula rasa? I'm just trying to be the counter a little bit for, on so many tech issues, we're at a four out of 10 in Canada, and sometimes we can get to seven out of 10, but we actually don't get to seven because we're motivated to get to 10 out of 10. I feel that way on a lot of our competition policy, of course. I see the 10 out of 10, I'm like, "Guys, let's do it, let's..." Anyway, it's a terrible analogy that I just used numbers out of 10, so I'm embarrassed for the quality of my thinking there, but you're right, Government should be better at this, right? Government should be better as open designers.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

You're talking about the proverbial perfect being the enemy of the good, right? That's the idea.

Renee Black:

I think I just worry that what's ended up happening in the vacuum of not, there being inadequate consultations, is the bills have become politicized, and I worry about that happening again. And again, I think it's just, it's affecting so many parts of our lives. I completely agree that there's different ways you can do that consultation and, Vass, I definitely agree that you can be putting something out there for discussion as one of the ways of going about doing that. I just feel like there's inadequate digital capacity, and policy, and literacy, and that's actually making all the impacts of these tools more harmful and more concerning, and also leading to lower adoption rates because there's a lot of concern, especially among small to medium organizations, around not doing it in a responsible way. And so it actually is having an impact on our productivity as well.

Maroussia Lévesque:

Can I just add on this, quickly? There are some circumstances in which consultation is not optional. It's an actual obligation of the government, and I'm thinking about nation-to-nation consultations for indigenous peoples. The other thing I would say is, to be the devil's advocate for one second, the government was working on short timelines. Maybe this partially explains the fact that they were committed to delivering on their promise of a digital charter and to address AI. That doesn't fully justify the situation in which we found ourselves, but that is the reality of the political cycle, that sometimes rushing something is maybe arguably better than doing nothing. And I think that in the longer arc of digital and AI policy in Canada, so AIDA failed and it was vehemently criticized by civil society for the lack of proper consultations, and now we have a chance to do things differently.

So we have the chance to consult properly and end up with a bill that better reflects a variety of interests and stakes. And so in one way, you could say that the democratic process worked, that the lack of consultation is maybe not the only reason why AIDA didn't pass, but there has been a political price for the lack of consultation, and the opportunity now to recalibrate and gain legitimacy by bringing in affected people on the receiving end of these systems. Not just academics like myself in the ivory tower, but people who are going to bear the brunt of these systems, because we know for a fact, historically speaking, these systems are always tested first on marginalized populations, incarcerated, people in mental health institutions, and so on.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

This has been a very lively and enlightening conversation. As we wrap, I did want to just quickly mention that we recently put out a call for contributions related to this, titled “Democratic Accountability in the Shadow of US Tech Power–How should Canada and Australia Respond?” Yeah, that's catchy.

Vass Bednar:

I love it. I love it.

Cristiano Lima-Strong:

It wasn't mine. If you have thoughts, if this conversation has sparked any ideas, you can send them our way at contributions@techpolicy.press. And with that, yeah, I just wanted to thank you all so much. Vass, Rene, Maroussia, thank you so much for joining us.