Thank you very much, Madam Chair and committee, for this opportunity to testify in support of your study on the issues related to automated and connected vehicles in Canada.

As you may know, I also had the honour, along with my co-witnesses, of testifying on this topic at the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications last spring. The Senate committee report is excellent. Please consider my remarks to be a build on that report.

I plan to focus on some major policy issues, but first I'll address the recent fatality of a pedestrian hit by a self-driving vehicle in Arizona. The video record suggests the collision was due to a technology systems failure, but the technologies involved are straightforward and in wide use. Why this happened is a mystery. There are probably big implications for regulatory policy, but automated vehicle technology will continue to advance.

I'll get into the main topic by respectfully suggesting that we broaden the conversation. The policy issues related to automated vehicles and connected vehicles—AVs and CVs, what I call intelligent mobility—are best addressed in combination with municipal planning and the smart city agenda. This is because intelligent mobility applications will be the defining networks of future cities, just as cars with human drivers shaped our cities and towns over the past 100 years. Smart cities and intelligent mobility bring many promises, such as safety, environmental benefits, congestion management, accessibility, convenience, and cost savings, among others.

There are also risks and challenges. For example, we know that ride-sharing in major U.S. cities has already increased congestion and reduced public transit use. The question is what Canada is doing to maximize the upside and minimize or mitigate the downside risks.

I'm going to focus on five topics: governance, data, infrastructure, mobility sector development, and social policy.

First, on governance, the Senate called for a joint Transport Canada-ISED policy unit for this topic. I suggest that as is happening elsewhere, this be broadened to an all-of-government approach. This is because the mobility and urbanism revolutions will have profound and disruptive impacts on just about every government policy and program area.

I further suggest the formation of a standing federal-provincial-territorial and municipal smart city intelligent mobility forum. This national SCIM forum, if you like, should be mandated to ensure that we realize the vision of a smart Canada that Canadians want.

Why do we need a new national forum? Well, consider my second topic, which is really at the heart of the issue: data policy. The Senate report rightly pays a lot of attention to this issue. There is a good chance that a handful of global mobility companies will dominate our streets, capture the data, and assert control over its use. The risks associated with this scenario are all over today's headlines. The Senate offers more recommendations on data policy than on any other topic, including cybersecurity, road safety, and of course privacy. The Senate also importantly identifies the need to open digital mobility data and algorithms so Canadian-based companies can participate and compete in this market.

The Senate's data policy framework deserves expansion. Governments need mobility and municipal data to manage traffic and inform infrastructure investments. The data is essential to mobility as a service concept that lets consumers move easily from bikes to buses to cars. It's necessary for transparent reporting of incidents, collisions, emissions, fuel efficiency, and road use and is necessary for assuring compliance with accessibility, pricing, and algorithmic neutrality policies.

More fundamentally, we should treat data rights as human rights. Individuals and communities should control the data derived from their essential activities, such as moving around and using public services. Mobility and city life is not the same as Facebook, which is an optional human choice.

My third topic is infrastructure. Two things are clear. First, some key current infrastructure plans fail the futureproofing test. Second, models of smart people-centric and transit-centric intelligent mobility design are now becoming clearer than they were even a year or two ago. The current approach of letting local decision-makers set the priorities has too often led to decisions with built-in obsolescence. We need to turn this around.

Fourth is innovation and growth of intelligent mobility and smart city sectors. I'm very active in this area. We have 175 digital mobility companies in Ontario. I'm on the advisory committee for the Automated Vehicle Innovation Network. There is a lot of good stuff happening here.

I'm going to skip through this because I'm running out of time, but I would say that the government needs to do a lot of work around skills development in this area. We need to proactively promote gender and diversity in these careers, and governments need to prioritize investments in intelligent mobility-friendly infrastructure and open up the data to support the sector.

Last, I will highlight the social policy implications. By my calculation, intelligent mobility will generate downside risks for jobs in sectors that employ 1.3 million Canadians. Most of these, such as insurance agents, car dealers, and carbon sector workers, aren't even professional drivers. On the other hand, we can achieve wonderful gains for the environment, for all kinds of disadvantaged groups, and for transportation equity if we get our policies and programs right. Once again, coordination can only help.

I'll close by saying that I'll be pleased to work with the committee and committee members in helping develop your work in this area. I'm also an adviser to the Information Technology Association of Canada, and we both have a great interest in data policy in particular, and in many dimensions, one of which is around economic development for Canada and Canadian competitiveness.

Thank you.

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