Toronto The Wired

Toronto could be Google's first digital city. (David Donnelly/CBC)

"The Waterfront Toronto executives and board are too dumb to realize they are getting played."
"Google knew what they wanted. And the politicians wanted a PR splash and the Waterfront board didn't know what they are doing."
"And the citizens of Toronto and Canada are going to pay the price."
Jim Balsillie, (former) chief executive, BlackBerry

"Those are great uses of data that can improve the quality of life of people. That's what we want to do."
"People automatically assume because of our relationship to Alphabet and Google that they will be treated one way or another. We have never said anything [about the data issue]."
"To be honest, people should give us some time. Be patient."
Dan Doctoroff, CEO, Sidewalk Labs

"How can [Waterfront Toronto], a corporation established by three levels of democratically elected government, have shared values with a limited, for-profit company whose premise is embedded data collection?"
"Is the municipality maintaining the fleet or forcing you to share your vehicle?"
Julie Di Lorenzo, Toronto developer

"It gives all of us pause. Everybody gets worried about the digital and technology aspects that might run amok."
"I don't worry about that as much as I see the opportunities for developing a really interesting, innovative community."
Waterfront Toronto chair, Helen Burstyn

The Quayside development would be the first step in a larger, 750-acre redevelopment.

How innovative? Visualize the potential for pavement designed to light up in warning to pedestrians when streetcars approach. Then there are "raincoats" designed as flexible heated enclosures to be deployed during the bitter winters that Toronto experiences, when weather reports warn of incoming weather threats. And how about robotic waste-sorting systems detecting a full garbage bin to be removed before raccoons decide to move in for close-up gustatory inspection.

Sidewalk Labs, attests its CEO, has no interest in monetizing individual personal information such that Google habitually does through search information. The plan is quite innocent of such intentions, focusing on inventing as-yet-undefined products and services that could potentially be marketed elsewhere by Sidewalk Labs. Think of Toronto as a giant laboratory benefiting Sidewalk Labs and just incidentally the citizenry of that great city. Buy that?

There it is, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- and Alphabet of which Google is a unit, lending its then-executive chairman -- Eric Schmidt to jointly announce the plan last year. With that kind of executive-level assurance what could possibly go wrong? As in, I'm from government and I'm here to make your life infinitely more interesting, practical and worthwhile. As if. But there's the patronage quality and who among the trusting search for credibility?

So Waterfront Toronto, a government agency, and Sidewalk Labs plan a partnership whereby they will build mid-rise apartments, offices, shops and a school on a 4.9-hectare site as an initial offering as it were, on a 325-hectare development -- to "fundamentally refine what urban life can be". A plan that oozes public interest being paramount, coming from data-omnivorous Google, to wire street lights and pavement in the public interest.

Since a neglected segment of the Toronto lakefront is the targeted site for this planned development it sounds pretty fail safe, doesn't it? A rundown area suddenly transformed into a highly-wired area to become a showplace unique on the planet, should Alphabet proceed. Quite the experiment on the part of a giant conglomerate with no hidden agenda obvious to the innocent onlooker. Yet complaints have arisen; there are always ingrates, everywhere, hmmm?

It seems that some are demanding the agreement must ensure a greater role for the local agency, representing city, provincial and federal governments, leading Waterfront Toronto to renegotiate the agreement with Alphabet's Sidewalk Lab. Following consultations, the as-yet embryonic blueprint will lead the developers to present a master plan early in the next year.

Toronto designer Julie Di Lorenzo resigned from the Waterfront Toronto board in dissatisfaction over the way the project was being ... projected, feeling data and Google's intentions require frank discussions -- believing Waterfront Toronto has agreed to the Google affiliate having too much influence over the developing project. Who, she asks, will own the autonomous vehicles? If people have no wish for their data to be collected, will they still be permitted to live there?

Reality does have a habit of impinging as when a recent Associated Press investigation discovered many Google services on iPhones and Android devices store location-tracking data even if their possessors make use of privacy settings meant to turn them off. Sidewalk Labs has not yet committed to who will own the data produced by the project, much less how it will be monetized, a concern of Bianca Wylie, an advocate of open government.

"We are not here to be someone's research and development lab, to be a loss-leader for products they want to sell globally", she noted acidly in observing that Google is involved for the purpose of profit and Canadians should themselves benefit from data or products developed from the site's development.

Furthermore, that the current agreement leaves data ownership issues for later clearly indicates improper drafting of the agreement.The take-away from that in and of itself will result in patents derived from the data defaulting to Google, noted Ottawa patent lawyer Natalie Raffoul. "We just can't be too trusting of corporations."

An artist’s illustration shows Sidewalk Labs’s Quayside redevelopment of the Toronto waterfront.

ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF sidewalk labs