Ontario to launch long-awaited data oversight body in new digital drive

Open this photo in gallery:

Ontario is launching a new authority tasked with overseeing data collection, management and security in the province after years of calls for greater oversight of what is considered an increasingly important public good.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy will announce the data authority on Friday as part of a series of new digital initiatives that will also include a new website about Ontarians’ data rights. He said in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail that the province will consult members of the public, businesses and other organizations this summer about how the data authority will be designed – including how data are collected and stored, and used for economic benefit.

“We have a lot of this data already,” said Mr. Bethlenfalvy, whose portfolio includes overseeing the province’s efforts around data. The full extent of the data that the authority will oversee is unclear, and will be determined through consultations. Mr. Bethlenfalvy offered a handful of examples of information that could be used for public good and economic benefit. They include traffic data that can help with urban designs, and soil or weather data that can inform food production optimization.

He emphasized the province’s focus on security and privacy in gathering data for the authority. “It can be done in a way that we can make the data available in an anonymized way that will allow patterns and behaviours to be assessed,” Mr. Bethlenfalvy said.

By regulating and allowing access to the data that reveal those patterns, businesses and governments can come up with new technologies and processes – such as the urban-design decisions that can emerge from traffic data.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario will be part of the process, the province said. And the details such as how data would be stored and collected – often referred to as “standards” – will be determined through consultations.

“The devil will be in the details, making it all too important that the government works closely with the experts leading Ontario’s data-driven firms to develop clear standards that will help innovative companies work more effectively with the province,” said Alanna Sokic, Ontario practice lead for the Council of Canadian Innovators, a national organization that lobbies on behalf of domestic technology companies.

The province has recently announced a number of digital initiatives, including an Ontario health data platform. Former BlackBerry co-chief executive officer Jim Balsillie was tapped by the province two years ago to lead a panel on bringing innovations to market.

Asked about the new data authority, Mr. Balsillie said in an e-mail that it “will serve as critical infrastructure that captures the economic and social benefits from this asset, just like Ontario Hydro did for electricity for the past century.”

Vass Bednar, executive director of McMaster University’s new master of public policy in digital society program, said the new data authority would be most beneficial if it levelled the playing field for all organizations.

“What’s in it for Loblaw?” Ms. Bednar asked as a theoretical question. “How would they access this hub, or how does it help them with their business, if at all? Or are the real insights to their business coming from the proprietary information they capture themselves, to which no small player can ever really compete?”

The global tug-of-war between the public and private sectors over responsibilities around data collection and stewardship has been growing since the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data-misuse scandal. In Ontario, data became one of the central points of contention of a 2017 proposal by Google sister company Sidewalk Labs to build a sensor-filled community at the edge of downtown Toronto.

The Sidewalk Labs project was cancelled in May, 2020, but the plans it outlined for Toronto spurred numerous national debates over both privacy and the economic advantages that data can wield – particularly by a company that had access to the massive computing power of Sidewalk parent Alphabet Inc. These debates raged for years, in large part because of the absence of up-to-date government regulations that would guide how private companies could collect and use data.

Though governments have long promised to update regulation and legislation to address such concerns, Canadian legislators have dragged their feet in introducing it. The federal Liberals insisted for years that they were working on legislation to update the two-decade-old Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, only introducing new measures last November.

Though it is intended to bring Canada’s privacy and data ecosystem in line with progressive jurisdictions such as the European Union and California, Bill C-11 has not yet reached committee review. And long-serving federal innovation minister Navdeep Bains, who introduced the bill, has since stepped away from cabinet with plans to exit federal politics.

Your time is valuable. Have the Top Business Headlines newsletter conveniently delivered to your inbox in the morning or evening. Sign up today.