Data Privacy Modernization – Michelle Rempel Garner

my name is Michelle I'm a member of parliament in Canada so roughly the equivalent of a congresswoman here and what I want to talk to you tonight about is I think what I think are some opportunities to really disrupt how government operates in the space that you're working in but what I wanted to enlighten you with a little bit is some of the challenges that I face as a legislator and then maybe just open up the floor in terms of perhaps Q&A but more of a call to action so I'll start with a little bit about Who I am and what I do I represent a district in Calgary Alberta so in Western Canada if any of you have had the privilege of skiing in bath I know we're in Colorado right now and you're all good and that sort of stuff but I would like to say that my home land is pretty awesome as well so it's in Western Canada my province has a big oil and gas based economy and in the last several years in in Canada we've seen a big disruption in our economy in our Confederation and a polarization of politics that well and the reason why I bring that up is that what's happening in the US we're not immune to it either except that our our political discourse has been some of these issues have been exacerbated by regionalization in our country but let's fast-forward to what I do I'm operating as the vice chair for the Standing Committee on industry I am the Shadow Minister for industry and economic development in Canada and it's a huge portfolio but one of the main areas that deals with is telecommunications data and privacy prior to entering politics I worked in technology commercialization I managed the intellectual property portfolio roughly speaking of a major Canadian University some of their sponsored research so how I've tried to approach legislation and legislative approach in canadaís is rather than saying just listening to what bureaucrats might say this is the way you should do it is always asking what is the public policy outcome and is this the best way of doing it which in and of itself is a novel way of looking at at political outcomes so in recent in recent years in Canada we've we've had a problem developed that has sort of spurred some of these regional tensions and it relates to to data and access to data in Canada access to data in and of itself just like access to the Internet is run by three large incumbent companies we pay for uh five times more for access to data than you do in the United States many Canadians actually come down to the United States to get data plans and as we see in our economy regionalization become more and more acute and people have less and less access to data and opportunity we're actually starting to see economic contraction due to that so at the same time we're also trying to look at the issues that many American legislators are looking at here which is what about data privacy so as we near the horizon of a 5g operating environment in Canada where we have an OLE Agathe lis of people who are providing or incumbents that are providing access to Internet we have a highly regionalised economy that's starting to become polarized and we also have these privacy concerns it's these are now becoming issues that are of importance of imports to parliamentarians the problem is nobody understands them number one and number two the reaction from government to address these issues has been regulate so I'm coming to you I think at a really critical juncture of my nation's history and that we just had a major report issue that had taken about a year for the government to write on what to do with these problems writ large and what came forward its if you want to enlighten yourself it's it's called the Yeats report it's this estate of the Canadian telecommunication industry in the state of data and privacy especially post GDP are it is pedantic down to the point of proposing things like this to combat fake news it suggested that the government regulates what media sites could be called media sites and that anybody who wanted to post a quote-unquote news article needed to get a link from a state approved media operator that was a bit of a shock but moreover the approach to data and data privacy was to expand our regulator to vast proportions with legislation that was less effectual than gdpr but more pedantic and is going to cost a lot of money so in the last several weeks we have start myself and a couple of other colleagues have tried to take a different approach because the government is proposing to take parts of this report and promulgated into legislation which I think would just really disadvantage Canada from an economic growth perspective so what we're suggesting is actually to start implementing some of the bills that if you're familiar with radical exchange the data dignity Act we're starting to look at ways to actually put this into legislation so that people valuate their privacy rather than government controlling it in a pedantic non-enforceable manner so that's the challenge this is what we're trying to do here's the problem I'm I'm having right now nobody understands what I'm talking about at all not even a clue trying to understand to talk to colleagues about this and I'm not trying to be condescending or arrogant it's just people fundamentally do not understand this space which makes it very difficult to translate it to get political opinion such that there is a desire to legislate or a desire to do something different so for example something as basic as trying to for example I was just I was talking to shave over dinner saying that you know I had to spend an hour and a half with a colleague trying to explain what the difference between Libra and Bitcoin was because they thought it was all the same thing right fundamentally trying to understand that data has a productive value that yes that's how Facebook makes money is is is it's just it's something that is not in the electorate's public consciousness it's not something that you can easily translate at the door and so I guess what I wanted to talk to you tonight and really get advice and feedback was how do we take some of these concepts that can disrupt the way that government works right now if we're talking about you know data cooperatives or quadratic financing or you know quadratic voting as ways to engage and Andrian vision democracy how do we take those concepts and put them into a space that the average voter can understand how do we take what you're doing here and poured it such that it has some saleability and that what we're doing is not just transactional so this is a highly innovative space there's really not a lot of literature about how this become how we take this and make it a political movement I think when I look around the world it appears that have tried to do this I think the Lib Dems and the UK tried slightly to do this Labour Party slightly tried this even the concept of cooperatives doesn't really have a partisan home that's really I think what groups like yourself need to do with folks like myself folks that were just on the stage here is really provide ways and means of us as politicians becoming translators of what you're doing and the value that it can provide to the public so for example I can walk you through what we're trying to do right now with the I'm not sure we're going to call it the data dignity act in Canada but we're trying to take those concepts and poured it into legislation the problem is is that it doesn't neatly overlay on the existing legislative structure in Canada it's like I always say that making legislation is both additive and subtractive you have to add legislation you also have to change it sometimes you have to delete things how do how do we do that in within the existing political structure so we've been we've been working on this bill for a couple of months now and it's it's been a challenge not just from the perspective of writing the legislation but trying to translate it through a parliament that just fundamentally doesn't understand the space at the same time we've been trying to stave off the government putting you know a billion dollars into they're calling it a data Commissioner so they're actually looking at setting up another arm of government specifically to manage data like for example one of the proposals in this report was essentially they wanted Netflix to hand over their algorithm and there they're there all of their IP on on what's coming up on your front screen so the Canadian government which is just like ridiculous but trying to explain to somebody why that's Gillis is part of the problem as well so we look you know I've looked too I've looked to the European Union in terms of the success and failures of the GDP are there's not a lot of overlap that we've seen to date in terms of being able to port it over into this some of these new new mechanisms like data cooperatives and I'm just I'm looking to you for QA on how we should do this and how we should what are some of the bright spots that legislators can put in place in terms of explaining these concepts in a politically saleable in a politically saleable mechanism I I think where we've had some success is that we've had a lot of media coverage in the last couple of weeks on the concept of data being upright like a property right but that in and of itself has some connotations that are difficult to pour it into like a cooperative model etc I guess I'll just close on a bright with a bright note I think that I think this is happening organically anyways I think that the structure is changing around government in a positive way that's benefiting you know the average person on the street the problem is is that how do we how do we stop the over-regulation that I think is about to come both in my country and here in the United States you know when you talk about antitrust legislation more regulation it's just it's very difficult as a legislator to get to that point so I guess you know I usually give a 30 minute dissertation on this but I'm in a room of people that are far smarter than I am on working in this space and I just like to open a dialogue up with you on the mic on any questions that you might have on what it's like to be a legislator dealing with these topics but also any suggestions that you have on best practice or how to communicate these concepts such that they might become part of a federal pain or a local campaign in terms of political political conversation I think there's a mic there's a floor mic there that I was told was turned sound guys I was supposed to be like yeah sound guys good so if you want up at the front there if you want to crap it all right hi okay hi uh happy birthday again thanks I just turned 40 whoo yeah yeah that's amazing I made it so you mentioned that legislators need help understanding these things what do you think is the best way for us to help from the outside in or the inside out what I'd like to see is a couple of tangible pilot projects that the electorate can interact with in in a very transactional way so that what we're talking about isn't abstract right for example and we were talking about this at dinner in Canada we have something called the Canadian media fund which was a fund that was put in place probably 10 15 years ago to fund quote-unquote Canadian content and by that I mean shows television shows etc that funding is doled out by bureaucrats in a highly lobbied environment in one part of the country and it actually in some ways while it was well-intentioned it excludes diverse voices and it excludes intersectionality intersectional voices and it also really doesn't produce stuff necessarily that people want so you know could we take a small fraction of that funding and somehow you know put together a qf model where we're piloting you know citizens getting government keys etc similar to what's happening in Estonia but where somebody's actually interacting with a decentralized system of governments I think that would be helpful I'm just not sure like where we would go to to look for something like that like I know there's get coin that sort of stuff but how do we scale that up how could that be ported on to an existing government stream do you think it sounds like there's a couple of steps before that that are maybe educational sure so how do you think that that happens I mean for those of you who watched the Zuckerberg Senate hearing I mean to me that was a really that was a wake-up call for me as a legislator even though it was in a different country just because of the like the questions that were coming out of the Senate committee were things that you could Google right so they're like legislators if I was in that situation I would be asking precise pieces of information that aren't publicly available that are material to legislation and there's just such a lack of knowledge on just the basics of a platform like Facebook right so if you if you look at the lack of knowledge and the knowledge gap between legislators even and this is it's not just I don't want to paint our legislature as old it's you know even among you know young legislators I think that just basic understanding of what decentralization means right most people have no clue I would say 95% of my broader colleagues in Parliament have no clue what a blockchain is at all like none like zero so like are there forums or ways to get members of the community in front of legislators who are open who like who may have political philosophies too that don't necessarily want to rely on regulation how do we show that there are like how do we educate that there are different ways of doing this and like I struggle finding resources to point to my colleagues and I struggle in explaining these concepts as well right like I'm not a subject-matter expert but I know just enough to sound dangerous so I think that's number one is like is the community producing resources that connects playing this in a way beyond like a YouTube video that you know you get lost 30 seconds and sorry thanks someone hi I have a company called everything private Dale were basically trying to decentralize data so this is very relevant conversation yes my question is what do you think of the CCPA and what do you think it does right and what do you think it doesn't do so right if you could serve generalized I mean in the in the Canadian context I think we're we're not even at a point where we're able to answer that question adequately like I know that that sounds very juvenile but I think what I would say is the desired future state that we would measure that against is whether or not somebody can valuate their own privacy whether or not they can derive value from their data in a meaningful way that's easy to port and and and and easy to interact with and I like this is my political philosophy coming through but that there's a limited role in government a limited role for government in that I I would I would look to you I mean I think that this space is so new from a legislative perspective that me coming back to you on like what it gets right and what it gets wrong I almost feel unqualified to answer that I like I'm sitting on the stage you know typically I I'm the first person who give up a 20 minute barn burner in the House of Commons but I feel like what politicians need to be doing right now is is listening to the community and saying like okay this has been my experience in starting up a company in this space it's doing what you want to do in terms of public policy outcome but here's where here's where the structures are failing right now so I know that that's not an adequate response but I guess what I wanted to do here tonight more than anything because I've been working with like radical exchange and other people was really open up a dialogue with the community in a more in a more formal way we need help we have no idea what we're doing right like a cross political stripe across government and I think you know founders like yourself actually need to come up and start we put it this way I don't think there's been a single lobbyist in Canada from a company like yours in any political office face meanwhile you know incumbents that are making money off of an existing status quo or would based on you know even more stringent regulatory environment are in our offices so you tell me I guess well and then well how do we port that into a regulatory / legislative framework that allows you to do what you're doing properly I don't know that was totally a shitty answer but like III I genuinely feel like there's so much there's so much runway to do like to really change the political narrative to change the political economy in this space and it's just not translating and I'm living in this space right now where it's just like I guess if I could ask one more question it would be what is the problem with the current data ecosystem if you could serve boil it down to its essence I'm first of all I just the line I've been using is that nobody in my country anyways has rights to the inherent value of their data so to me that's that's the problem because if we're starting from the perspective that you don't have rights to your data and it's the government's rule simply to regulate that then that's a very binary path forward and it stymies the work that you're doing right so to me that that's the greatest challenge I'm facing as a legislator is just saying like how we've been trying to have been trying to communicate in this space is nobody would work for free your labor has productive value so why in many cases I would say somebody's data almost may have more productive value than their data or than their labor why are we not valuing it in the same way and to me that's the biggest problem is that and the other thing is is that that's not that concept is not enshrined in any sort of international structure that's globally portable right it's even the concept itself is highly vulcanized so it's difficult it's difficult for you to operate or thinking about how you would scale up your company or how you would govern it you know talking to people that are trying to come up with data cooperatives I think you know cross-border governance is a problem especially if you're trying to to monetize it and I think that if we can get one or two countries that getting that legislative framework right and able to implement it it would open up a whole new market that we could have a lot more investment in I guess I'm sorry one last question too is you know just talking to a few colleagues here I also think that people look at the data ecosystem as like a traditional business model like it's like they're trying to port some of these things to like like like like a traditional sort of VC deal and it's that's not how it works right so that's part of the problem as well all right nice to meet ya question for you what do you think of the idea of offering bug bounty solutions for our legislation itself so yeah yeah is like what about democratizing solutions like offering bounties for people to solve legal code and regulations you know like yeah kind of like a cooperation of legal analysts data scientists to see the impacts of that legislation and whatnot I'm so glad you brought this up because like okay this is sort of highly provocative but in a future and ideal future state I shouldn't have a job in that like I we have we have the we have the framework and the capability right now we have the capability in theory of having a direct democracy right we just haven't really thought about how we implement that and how do I feel about that I think that's awesome like if you look at the if you look at the level of in any given week in my Parliament there's five or six different bills being debated there's a billion dollars plus of new expenditures we have to review it's like physically impossible for me to review everything that I vote on right it's just it's impossible because government's become so ubiquitous so if my you know I represent a hundred twenty thousand people and I'm just trying to figure out where I'm putting my attention and what I'm advocating for it's very inefficient right like I think in an ideal future state the decentralization of government and oftentimes when people hear that they think about you know devolution of federal to like state or federal to provincial powers we should really be saying like how can we Civic advocacy shouldn't just be about our civic engagement shouldn't just be about encouraging people to vote for an elected representative it should be to do the things that you're talking about absolutely and in a country the reason why I started with with my talk off by talking about how regionalised Canada has become is I actually think that that's one of the ways that we can keep our confederation together is paradoxically by D centralizing some of these decisions so that you don't get the same sort of regional disparity and I think you feel it here in the US too but I think to me that sort of concept that you're talking about it transcends partisan boundaries it's because we're talking about a new framework for democracy that's really cool but again to the point that was made earlier we we act we have to have some some tangible pilots of these things so that people see that this is in in the public's best interest thank you yeah welcome to Colorado I love Colorado yeah I'll preface this by saying I'm running for Congress yes what caused me to pull the trigger was watching the House Committee on Banking finance question Facebook / Libra and realizing not a single one of them knew anything about banking or finance exactly do you think can you do you know of anybody whether they're in the Canadian Parliament or the US Congress or Senate or any other country nearby who might be allies for you people who at least are willing or open-minded to listen and learn a little bit if you can get people who have it seems to me that if you can get people not just a single country who have some knowledge now that you can talk to each other you can you can come up with ideas you can take those ideas back to your own government and say here's what we're doing I think radical exchange is doing a great job of that you know Glenn while others vitalik that are involved in that democracy earth I know that some of the folks are here that that I think is starting to become a catalyst for legislators it didn't start in the legislator community but we end up bumping you know into each other and then it's like oh this is really cool so I think that that group has done a great job I'm trying to in Canada start like a group of allies that are nonpartisan on this that are across our House of Commons as well as our Senate committees so we're actually starting um I met with a senator who wants to take the lead on this on on his side of the legislature and we're gonna start an intra parliamentary working group on this but again like like your point on Libre vs Bitcoin like like no like like our dinner conversation was like you actually have to explain to people how cash works to understand the difference right like and you have to even go back to bartering like I have a pig you have a cow how do we know that I now have the pig and you now have the cow right so it's like what do you mean our money is based on debt you know like so but at the same time I think that there's another way of looking at it which is very much this sometimes I don't need to know how it works I just need to know how it affects my life and if it's good or bad and I think that that's where the intersection of between what your community is doing and what we're the legislators we just need to take it up from the weeds and actually start talking about the fact that there are different ways of managing a society that we are now technologically enabled to do that people just haven't really had to the courage to talk about yet or the knowledge so you know I would say that the more that we can get these platforms into public and popular political discourse the better and good for you for running awesome boss go for it I think this is we're just we're done one more question or one more question yeah that kind of changes things I guess so as a last question cuz you talked a lot about education yes so my experience the higher up in government you go the more expensive more longer winded and the more frustrating it actually gets to work with government you like gopher municipality de Provence too so and usually what ends up happening is you have a large conglomerate that gets end up shaping policy so if like the telecoms are hoarding all the data somehow someway the CTO of Bell shapes the policy so two questions within one a how does funding get unlocked for education and how do you startups that maybe not have as such market reach as a conglomerate get to have a voice of the table to actually educate the policymakers that would benefit from their knowledge sure I'm that's such a great point and it really goes to the the complexity and the closeness of the lobbyists and legislative world right yeah I mean it's not as bad in Canada I shouldn't say this in the United States I feel like it's a little more intense in the United States how about that I'm married to an American so yeah I part of it is just poking into the world that this happens in right I I think that there needs to be more formal advocacy groups you know we're talking about data cooperatives we need to have cooperatives of people that are wanting to advocate for change in this direction that are actually becoming lobbyists I mean but at the same time I think that this the system is being disrupted right so it's about marrying those examples of where disruption is happening and turning legislators intention attentions on that with intent so I mean Libra is a good example of that Libra just kind of popped out of nowhere it got a lot of people's attention that is an opportunity for you know collectives of startup owners you need associations essentially right that are coming into people's offices that are interacting with groups like the one that we're trying to put together in Canada such that the old like there's not only one binary policy choice that's coming up and I know that that sounds really crass and not cool but you can't you you can't beat the game if you're not going to play the game to a certain extent right and mache play the game right but knowing that there are people that want that want something different that understand fundamentally that there has to be changed so that's this is the weirdest talk I've ever given I'm gonna be honest with you I but I just want to extend an invitation talk to us call us get in front of your Congressman and find allies I think that that is the perfect way to describe this and tell us what to do please don't assume that we have any idea what you're talking about because we don't and and come into our offices and thank you for all the work you're doing to and Canada on this thank you [Music]