Technology is making privacy increasingly difficult to preserve. Last week’s guest on the Big Tech podcast, Carissa Véliz, believes our current relationship with online privacy needs to change, and that there are ways to go about it. Véliz is the author of Privacy Is Power and associate professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford.
Dan Ciuriak and Patricia Goff consider how Canada’s trade, investment and innovation policies and partnerships should be adjusted, in light of new political constraints and secular trends, to mitigate the national security risks and threats arising from economic interdependence, while ensuring fertile ground for innovation and enhanced competitiveness across the range of regional and sectoral needs in Canada.
Canada’s long history of democratic elections makes it a strong leader in helping other countries protect their elections from foreign threats, hacking and disinformation campaigns. A “best practices” template for holding safe, secure and transparent elections would help Canadians feel more confident in their electoral system, and could be used by reform-minded countries, Brian Klass and Aaron Shull write.
Last week, Rohinton P. Medhora, CIGI president and chair of the Ontario Workforce Recovery Advisory Committee, spoke to Global News about the committee’s new report, released December 9, which recommends Ontario develop a worker benefits plan not tied to employers. You can listen here.
A nearly year-long civil war and humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region has been in the international headlines, yet a plan to build a national ID system in Ethiopia is going virtually unscrutinized, despite our growing recognition that tech companies and platforms can play a role in exacerbating such crises. As Elizabeth M. Renieris writes, the implications of blockchain-based ID systems, and the underlying imaginations that shape them, should concern us all.
The US government and the Taliban continue to grapple amid the repercussions of America’s exodus from Afghanistan at the end of August. In the power vacuum in the Middle East and North Africa, the online space is particularly affected by these grabs for control, and the associated manipulations of media, as Inga Trauthig and Samuel Woolley explain.
Countries and industry leaders that contribute to setting standards in their areas of strength gain an advantage in scaling their companies and seizing commercial opportunities globally. In developing advances such as quantum technology, Canada should aim to reach the forefront of research, generate intellectual property with commercial potential, and attract investment that creates wealth and jobs, as well as increased national security, argues Matthew Bondy.
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