No. We must give the process a chance

Over the past year, growing public attention has focused on Sidewalk Labs and its innovation partnership with Waterfront Toronto at the 12-acre Quayside site. Meanwhile, a small but dedicated corps of activists has delivered a master class in not-in-my-backyard attacks on Sidewalk Labs and the Quayside project.

Critics have called the project “antidemocratic,” a “tragedy,” “weaponized” and “dangerous,” while partner organizations are supposedly “arrogant,” “brazen” and much more. Dare to offer an opinion in support of the project online and you’ll quickly be labelled as “ignorant,” “paternalistic” or be told you must be on Sidewalk’s payroll to take that view.

The good news is that outside the Twitter bubble, all this rhetoric is a little premature. As the winner of a competitive request for proposal, Sidewalk merely has a legal right to submit proposals to bring innovative developments and services to the Quayside site, alongside a requirement to offer broader ideas for how its innovations could contribute to other Port Lands developments.

Approvals are far from guaranteed. There have been delays on both sides, as always. Some ideas that have emerged, or been leaked, are already political non-starters, including the use of a taxfinancing tool to repay funders if Sidewalk Labs subsidized a new Waterfront LRT line.

What this means is as of now, this supposedly “dangerous” partnership doesn’t permit Sidewalk to do much more than run an improvised test facility. To build any innovative new buildings at Quayside, the firm and any partners will need to clear more government approvals than a typical construction project, since Waterfront Toronto and its land is owned by all three levels of government.

As with any other development proposal, give-and-take is par for the course. Sidewalk is drawing on best practices from around the world, adjusting its pitch for feedback until it makes a final submission. This is a good thing. And many of Sidewalk’s ideas are anything but non-starters. For example, it is experimenting with design techniques to build more housing more cheaply, so savings can be passed on in the form of more affordable rents.

Activists insist the process isn’t considerate of public criticism. Those same critics attack Sidewalk for consulting with invited stakeholders to hear feedback, even though those consultations are separate from Waterfront Toronto’s own consultations, and City Hall’s public committee gauntlet to come. They’ve said it’s unfair for Sidewalk to adjust plans due to criticism from elected officials before making a final submission. Contradictory arguments like these work for anti-Quayside activists because, for many of them, blowing up the entire process is the goal.

Abetter approach would be for Torontonians to tune out the insults. Judge Quayside based on formal submissions made to actual governments later in this long process.

This is Toronto’s moment to think carefully about what kind of city we want and how we work with companies who are willing to innovate to build it, instead of being a city that defines itself by how quickly we can win the race to say no.

The Toronto Region Board of Trade has worked with city hall and the business community for more than three years to support the emerging “Smart Cities” sector. We’re seeing growing success, and the presence of foreign firms, like Sidewalk Labs, can feed that success, giving skilled Canadian entrepreneurs more opportunities to commercialize in Toronto instead of taking their innovations to markets outside Canada.

Support for the Quayside project doesn’t have to mean unconditional support. For our part at the Board of Trade, we’ll continue to listen patiently to critics to identify reasonable, fixable public policy problems.

That’s why we took the lead in January, calling for governments to identify a specific agency to regulate and host “public realm” data generated by companies like Sidewalk in our Bibliotech report. Queen’s Park just launched consultations to develop a data strategy just this month and Councillor Joe Cressy recently moved to do the same at City Hall.

Governments are proving they can respond constructively to the challenges and the opportunities that Sidewalk presents. As a dynamic and growing city, Torontonians can and should do the same.