Waterfront Toronto officials to face grilling in Ottawa over Sidewalk Labs plans

Two senior Waterfront Toronto members will be grilled in Ottawa on Thursday over concerns about whether the controversial Sidewalk Labs smart city project is really what Toronto needs.

Meg Davis, chief development officer for Waterfront Toronto, and Kristina Verner, vice- president of innovation, sustainability and prosperity, have been invited to appear before the standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics.

Waterfront Toronto, a provincial, federal and municipal body in charge of revitalizing the city’s waterfront, has partnered with Sidewalk Labs on a proposal to create a tech-driven residential neighbourhood along the waterfront on a parcel of land called Quayside.

Since its beginning, the project has been dogged by fears over Sidewalk’s plans to collect data pertaining to residents living in the neighbourhood and people who may be passing through the area.

Sidewalk has pledged to remove all personally identifiable information from the data it collects. But that hasn’t quelled concerns from critics.

Last week, the Star revealed that Sidewalk, a sister company of Google, has designs on building beyond the 12 acres (4.8 hectares) at Quayside and expanding into the Port Lands.

NDP MP Charlie Angus, co-chair of the committee, said in an interview Tuesday night that he wants to know the “full nature of the project” including how the partnership between Waterfront Toronto was constructed and why there was a “short timeline” during which Waterfront Toronto awarded its RFP (request for proposals) to Sidewalk to come up with a plan for Quayside.

And he’s especially concerned about the news regarding the Port Lands.

He went on to say that all along the public has been told Sidewalk’s idea for Quayside was a “cool, neat experiment,” but that’s now been dashed by last week’s revelations about the expanded vision for the Port Lands.

“Now it seems like the goal from the outset was to turn a massive chunk of Toronto real estate over to one of the biggest corporations in the world with very little public scrutiny,” Angus said.

He is also concerned about the public’s fears about data collection and how this will impact citizens’ rights in public and private spaces.

“Having these things engineered by a company whose business is collecting personal information struck us (the committee) as a concern,” Angus said.

“But I think the bigger question now is how this whole deal was constructed, is it in the public interest, is this something citizens in Toronto are going to fully benefit from, or is this a sweetheart deal for a very, very powerful private corporation?”

Ethics committee chair and Conservative MP Bob Zimmer said the committee wants to probe whether “citizens fully understand what’s going to happen if (this project) is implemented.”

“How much data do they need to collect. It’s (a) concern for us as legislators how much data they’ll be collecting on citizens,” Zimmer said.

According to the Star’s story last week, Sidewalk wants to develop new neighbourhoods and a new light rail transit line throughout the entire Port Lands and wants a share of the property taxes, development fees and increased land values — money that would normally go to the city’s coffers.

These future revenues, based on the anticipated increase in land value once the little-used Port Lands are built up, are estimated to be $6 billion over the next 30 years.

“We don’t think that 12 acres on Quayside has the scale to actually have the impact on (housing) affordability and economic opportunity and transit that everyone aspires to,” said Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff earlier.

The ethics committee’s invitation to the senior Waterfront Toronto members was made over a week ago, before the Star story broke. The meeting is being held to discuss the “implementation of digital government services in Canada” and how the government can improve its services while protecting Canadians’ privacy and security.

Sidewalk is working on a draft master plan and a final plan is expected later this year, both of which must be approved by Waterfront Toronto.

Verner, of Waterfront Toronto, says the corporation looks forward to presenting before the committee and has been advised the discussion may include topics such as:

• Developing recommendations on how to amend the federal Privacy Act or other laws to protect the personal information of Canadians as society becomes more digitized;
• The main challenges regarding respecting the protection of personal information as government services become increasingly digitized and;
• Difficulties related to the implementation of digital government initiatives that have been encountered in other countries.

But the scope of Thursday’s meeting can be expanded. Zimmer said members are free to ask whatever questions of Waterfront Toronto they choose.