Welcome to The Advance, the newsletter of the CCA. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can sign up here.

IN THIS EDITION:

• Digital policy and the road ahead
• Help build a collaborative future for ocean research in Canada
• Readings on forever chemicals, new reports on productivity and AI automation, and “a public version of social media”
• Impact report: Canada’s top climate change risks

Digital policy and the road ahead

In early May, Emily Laidlaw and Florian Martin-Bariteau, members of the CCA’s Expert Panel on Public Safety in the Digital Age, observed that “digital policy…was largely absent from Canada’s federal election conversation.” In an essay for the Toronto Star, Laidlaw and Martin-Bariteau called for updated digital policies shaped by a “whole-of-government approach” to promote innovation and national security, among other concerns. “We live in a data-driven economy where technology drives both innovation and opportunity, while simultaneously posing risks to our security and fundamental rights,” they wrote. “It’s time for our government to step up and safeguard Canadians and our economy.”

A week later, Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed Evan Solomon as Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation. Following the announcement, the CBC noted that several bills concerning data security, online harms, and AI failed to advance before Parliament was prorogued in January. Those bills and others “aimed at bringing Canadian law to the 21st century and started a much-needed conversation,” Laidlaw and Martin-Bariteau wrote.

The CCA’s Vulnerable Connections report focused on cyber-enabled activities that inflict harm on individuals. “One of the main challenges of state governance of digital spaces is enhancing the health of the online ecosystem,” the panel wrote. “Digital technologies present substantial public safety challenges that transcend national borders. These challenges will only increase as new technologies enter the market.” The CCA is proud to make Vulnerable Connections available to the public as the conversation on our digital future continues to unfold.

Read Vulnerable Connections.

Download a one-page summary of findings.

Join the CCA and MEOPAR for one of our upcoming virtual discussions, for Northern and Arctic researchers on July 8 or for general audiences on July 10.

Readings and Events

• Dr. Theresa Tam, whose tenure as Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer spanned the COVID-19 pandemic, will leave her position on Friday, June 20.
  
• The Canadian Climate Institute’s annual Indigenous Perspectives roundtable begins June 18 with “Indigenous Ways of Knowing as Climate Policy,” and concludes June 19 with “Indigenous Power as the Pathway to Clean Electricity.”
  
• Fonds de recherche du Québec invites submissions for its annual awards for emerging talents and French publications. Applications are due in August.
  
• “How might we create a public version of social media?” At the Hill Times, Alicia Wanless and Heidi Tworek, a member of our Expert Panel on Public Safety in the Digital Age, look to the history of the CBC’s founding for lessons on preserving “a vibrant information ecosystem.”
  
• CDA Essentials, the magazine of the Canadian Dental Association, drew on When Antibiotics Fail, the CCA’s 2019 report, to explore the ways in which dentistry might engage the challenge of antimicrobial resistance. In recent years, writes Dr. Susan Sutherland, “dentists account for almost 10% of all antibiotic prescriptions in Canada.”
  
• The CBC recently released an interactive map documenting places where PFAS, known as forever chemicals, have polluted lands and imperilled drinking water: “Some hotspots are well-known, others less so.”
  
• During the Globe and Mail’s “Intersect 25” event, Hydro‑Québec CEO Michael Sabia said that Canada has “an ambition deficit” and “a lot to fix on the regulatory side” during a conversation on the country’s economic future. Sabia was named Canada’s next Clerk of the Privy Council by Prime Minister Mark Carney last week.
  
• A year after community workshops in Nunavut, a pair of researchers reflect on how DNA technologies might support community-led food security efforts. “Community-partnered DNA research not only ensures collaboration puts knowledge into action,” write Shivangi Mishra and Srijak Bhatnagar at The Conversation, “but also ensures genomics and genetic concepts become part of Inuit self-determination.”
  
• A new issue of Canadian Public Policy focuses on “understanding Canada’s productivity problem,” with new reports on patenting, machine learning, and skill production after workers conclude school and enter the labour market.
  
• A new report from the IRPP considers “how generative AI might transform work activities and skill requirements across different sectors and regions of the Canadian academy.” Among the findings: Clerical work showed “the highest automation risk,” while “skills involving human interaction, social perception, and instruction demonstrate markedly lower vulnerability.”