#250 Canada's First Smart City Is A Disaster

October 29, 2018

CANADALAND

#250 Canada’s First Smart City Is A Disaster

Google's sister company, Sidewalk Labs, has partnered with every level of government to build the first-ever 'smart city' in Toronto — but with several high-profile resignations and mounting privacy concerns, will this project ever break ground?

Reporter Amanda Roth (The Logic) has spent the year investigating Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto’s ‘smart city’ plan, and has broken story after story on the tech giant’s project.

David Skok is the editor-in-chief of The Logic, a new media start-up reporting on the innovation economy. He speaks with Amanda about the timeline of her reporting, how to responsibly cover big tech, and why people should be concerned by more than just potential privacy issues when it comes to this partnership.

—

This episode is brought to you by Second City, Audible, and FreshBooks

More from this series

#1148 Canadaland’s Election Confessions

Jesse Brown is an ideological slut. Well, so he says. His past votes have jumped, in no particular order, from the Conservatives to the NDP “....maybe there was a fringe party or Parti Québécois vote in there somewhere, I can’t even remember who I’ve thrown in with over the years — I have no loyalty, I’m politically promiscuous.”

April 28, 2025

Larry of the North: 70 Years of Arctic Sovereignty

“I'm just watching the great powers in between me and down there and over there and it's almost like a bad nightmare.” - Larry Audlaluk

April 21, 2025

Investigation: What Mark Carney Won’t Say About Brookfield

“ Here is what I would've done if I was Mark Carney, right? Just let it be out there. If you really have nothing to hide, don't hide.” - Professor Partha Mohanram

April 14, 2025

Election Dysfunction and Bozo Eruptions

“...the tentacles of party discipline and party control have completely grabbed a hold of everybody and they have a really hard time breaking free. We just no longer have politicians who can speak their minds, politicians who can stand up on behalf of their constituents.” -Alex Marland, author of Whipped: Party Discipline in Canada

April 7, 2025

When the Alt-Right “Infiltrated” a Small Town

“ …the City of Pickering has witnessed a growing infiltration of alt right individuals, ideologies, and influences that have created an atmosphere of uncertainty, fear, and intimidation over our Council, our staff, our residents, and indeed the broader community.” - Pickering Mayor Kevin Ashe

March 31, 2025

#1128 Election Snap! Here’s Exactly Who You Should Vote For

“ Look inside yourself, Rosemary. I mean, you start from a prior of conflict and Ill will.” - Prime Minister Mark Carney

March 24, 2025

#1124 Who’s Banning Thousands of Books? The Left and the Right

“We cannot treat libraries as organs of propaganda, and whether it's for progressive values or for conservative values, we should not be treating libraries as simply the PR department for the kind of ideology that we believe in, and trying to ban everything else.” - Ira Wells, author of “On Book Banning”

March 17, 2025

#1120 Trudeau Dumpster Dive

We take a dumpster dive to look at all the legislation that got thrown out when Trudeau prorogued Parliament. Jesse tests the theory that one person’s trash is another’s treasure.

March 10, 2025

All Podcasts

CANADALAND