Canadians at risk of becoming ‘data cows’ without national strategy, experts warn

OTTAWA Artificial intelligence could give internet giants like Facebook and Amazon even more power to reshape the Canadian economy, threatening the viability of domestic businesses, researchers warn.

A December presentation to senior civil servants said that Canadian companies were losing own- ership of — and access to — data to the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, requiring a federal policy response.

Artificial intelligence “will reinforce this trend,” presenters from the National Research Council warned top officials, adding that a national data strategy would be necessary to prevent Canada from becoming “a nation of ‘data cows’ for other countries.”

The presentation, among other documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, provides a window into the scale of the problem the Liberals are trying to tackle by crafting a national data strategy, and the breadth of departments involved in its creation.

The Liberals took another step toward the creation of the strat- egy by launching online and inperson consultations that will run through the summer in order to inform a final policy.

Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains said the government wants to hear voices beyond industry stakeholders before settling on any policy options. “It’s fundamentally about saying, ‘Look, you have a voice, you should participate,’ because in the new economy, technology (is) practically touching every aspect of our lives,” Bains said. “Data is such a key part of that.”

The Liberals have been under pressure from business leaders and academics to swiftly craft a national strategy to harness the expanding power of the data-driven economy, and tackle the thorny issues of privacy and misuse.

Complicating matters is the shifting rules of the game with the pace of technological change: The large internet firms that hold vast amounts of data operate largely outside the reach of traditional government regulation and taxation.

Old-school regulations tend to have less of an impact on online platforms, suggesting the need for a non-traditional policy response, deputy ministers at the meeting were told