On Innovation and Economic Growth with Debbie Gamble and Jim Balsillie

Debbie Gamble: I’m Debbie Gamble, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Interac, and you’re listening to Everyday Trust. We are witnessing a period of accelerated digitization in Canada. With this comes new opportunities and increased efficiencies. It also highlights one of the most important questions innovators face today. How can we give Canadians the confidence they need to participate fully in our emerging digital economy? The answer that I come back to over and over again is trust. Trust unifies our families, our communities, and even the way that we’re governed. Trust can take years to build and a singular moment to break. And in a digital world, the way we build and maintain trust is constantly evolving, and we need to stay ahead of the curve. In this series from Interac, I’m talking to leaders about what trust means to them.

DG: I’m excited to be talking today to Jim Balsillie. You may movie of the same name. Jim is the cofounder and chair of the Digital Governance Council, formerly the CIO Strategy Council. He’s also founder and chair of the Center for Digital Rights, the founder and chair of the Center for International Governance Innovation, the chair of the Council of Canadian Innovators, and the founder of the Balsillie School of International Affairs. He’s a tireless advocate for Canada’s competitive capabilities, and he is committed to bolstering our presence on the global innovation stage. There aren’t many people with as nuanced an understanding of what trust looks like in the digital era as Jim. So, I’m delighted to have you join us today, Jim. Welcome.

Jim Balsillie: It’s a pleasure to be with you, Debbie, both as a friend and a collaborator. So, thank you for inviting me.

DG: Before we dive in, you, I think, have a unique perspective on the topic of digital trust. So, can you talk a bit about what that means from your vantage point? How do you define trust?

JB: I really enjoy the fact we’re taking a broad aperture on this today so that we can see the forest before we talk about the trees. But really, we know what trust means. It means that you believe that the system’s going to be fair with you and be good with you in its full completeness. And… uhm, and in the digital era, it’s become much more, consequential, and it’s become much more cross cutting. Trust is one of those things that takes a long time to earn and a short period of time to lose it. People know if they’re being protected or not. And if they’re not being protected responsibly, that’s where trust is gone. And so, I think the stakes are incredibly high that we protect that trust. Uhm In a in the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

DG: So, when we think about it, you know, that way, uh what’s at stake uh when we start talking about building and preserving digital trust?

JB: Well, I mean, I think in many respects, we are getting it wrong in the last era, say, a decade, and I think we’re seeing the consequences of that. I think we are seeing the erosion of democracy. I think we’re seeing the misinformation and polarization of discourse. We’re seeing the inability to come together to address common issues like pandemics in harmonious fashion or climate. I think we’re seeing rising, inequality and, and reactions to that. We’re seeing a soaring mental health crisis in children and young boys and young girls where we’re toxifying their growing the environments they must grow in that they don’t have a fair shot. Uh. And of course, markets are becoming monopolized and innovation dynamism is slowing down. And then the threat matrix is going up in in the, the world has changed geopolitically where the rivals, economic rivals and security rivals, large ones have emerged in that time, and we’re vulnerable absent the preparedness for this. So, I think the cost of inattention are at a sphere. I think we’ve accrued a lot of those costs to date. I think where there’s more cost to be paid, we have to take this seriously. It is a beautiful country. We love it. But these are new forces, and I don’t think we’ll have the same kind of future as we have in the past if we don’t up our game and up our attention on addressing these in their fullness and, of course, appropriate identity systems when people start to use these online services and know that your online experience is safe and people aren’t hijacking identity, and you can get new services. It’s a very, very important part of a system, but it’s a bigger system, and it’s a and it’s a system with many moving parts. And that’s why I think this is the most important public policy issue of our time. We have to get very front footed on this. We have to protect what we value. We have to advance what we value, both sub nationally, nationally, and internationally in this realm. I can’t stress enough how high the stakes are. I think we have the ability to do it, but we have to be aware of gaslighting where people try to foment in in action or confuse or these kinds of things.

DG: I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think this is also around the notion of how do we manage the kind of misinformation, and the disinformation around the notion of trust or even verification. In a recent conversation we had with another friend of ours, the wonderful Senator Colin Deacon, he mentioned that, you know, he receives multiple emails from Canadians every day saying that they don’t want digital ID per se, but what they want is control over their data in a way to prove who they are. So, you know, there’s also that not only do we need to raise this topic, but we also need to do a little bit of education, maybe a lot of education, around how we give Canadians the appropriate tools so that they actually do have, control over the digital information and the ability to securely and comfortably, continue to engage digitally.

JB: People are nervous because there’s reasons to be nervous, and you have to earn their trust through your actions, not general statements that it’s going to be fine, it’s going to be great, and the future’s going to be bright, not for everybody all the time. In a sense, if we don’t put the governance around how these systems are used, if we don’t manage the social license, if we don’t gate the potential harms, then I think people have a legitimate concern. They’ll be turned against them. And I get there’s some potential benefit there, but I also see the threat. It’s not the new oil. It’s new plutonium. It’s incredibly powerful, lots of opportunity. But it can be weaponized, and it can also cause great harm if not handled responsibly. All roads go to up in our game, up in our engagement, up in our expertise, urgently.

DG: Indeed. And I, you know, I think I think the last three years or so during the pandemic and our continued reliance on technology has really elevated this topic of trust to new heights. Right? So of course it’s essential for the success of any business. It’s essential for security and reliability, but I think we’re starting to realize it is also a kind of key element to the success of our economy and just our general kind of commonwealth and the prosperity and future of our country. Maybe you can give us an example of how the notion of, digital trust actually impacts Canadians on a day to practical day to day basis.

JB: One example, and this is a real example, where let’s suppose somebody moves from Alberta to Ontario. You have to line up multiple times over months to register for a new driver’s license, to get a license for your car, and then to get insurance. And that’s all because the Ontario system does not recognize your identity from the Alberta system. So that’s a form of federated identity. So, somebody who’s moving says, well, I like that. That sounds pretty good. It saves a lot of money. It saves me a lot of hassle. It gets me all set up pretty good. But absent the governance, these systems can be turned against you in in surveillance and harms. And so, we want the benefit, we don’t want the harms, the benefits are clear. Or let’s suppose there’s a there’s a cooperation between your bank and revenue candidate to populate your t four for a mortgage application. So, the benefits are there, private sector, public sector. We know, that is clear, but let’s make sure the system can’t be turned against the people who are wanting to get the benefits of the system.

DG: So, what are the opportunities, when we succeed in in building and maintaining digital trust?

JB: Well, there’s tremendous opportunities, obviously, that, you can get enhanced public services. You can get, in e ecosystem dynamism. People can develop and absorb all of these, advanced services in their lives, public and private. So, I think there’s a wonderful array there. I believe in technology. I believe in innovation. I believe in entrepreneurship. And so, I I’m quite excited about the future.

DG: Certainly, the opportunities, that I see is working with yourself, with other players in the public and private sector, with the various different institutions that are looking at ensuring inclusivity that all Canadians have the opportunity to participate in in the digital economy, that, the challenges in the areas that we are focused on as relevant to their everyday needs, and that we can do that with a level of authenticity. And I mean that both on a principles base, but also, that we can bring, secure, reliable, solutions to market that are that are going to enable Canadians to be comfortable in trusting, the fact that they know that they’re connecting with the entity, the people they believe that they’re connecting with. So that kind of framework of trust that touches on authenticity, inclusiveness, and relevance is super important to me, and I think it’s also a great framework for us to think about how we address the challenges and the opportunities. And then we want the ability for Canadians to control those situations, control and feel confident that they know who it is they’re engaging in, what kind of data that they’re comfortable with sharing, and have the ability when they decide, no, I no longer want to share that information, that they can revoke that consent. And I think that’s kind that’s certainly the goal that we have at Interact. Certainly, the goal in our Interact verified proposition is to be able to leverage the technology, leverage the players in the ecosystem both across the public and private sector, and do what we do best is become the network that joins all of those various parties to deliver value to Canadians.

JB: Yeah. You’re a trust utility, so you live in a realm of public trust. So, your engagement is very important to build and enhance and preserve that trust because you’re in a very trusted role.

DG: Yeah. And it’s a role we don’t take for granted. You know? It’s a very privileged role that we pay particular attention to the governance of that network to ensure that we are delivering on our commitments every day. You’ve done lots of work on championing the notion of kind of Canada growing our IP, and, you know, you’re a huge proponent of innovation. So how can we leverage some of these, technologies and capabilities to unlock innovation and really put Canada, you know, on stage with the best and brightest from around the world.

JB: In the mid-seventies, about seventeen percent of the standard and poor technology, value was intangibles. Now it’s ninety one percent and climbing. This is where the money is. It’s also where the social benefit and security benefit comes, so that’s dual use. But specifically, in an economic realm, if we don’t own our IP, if we don’t control our data, we are sharecroppers in our own economy, our own society. I mean, our policy community for the last forty years has had an anachronistic lens on how the economy works because they use a tangible production economy, model of free trade and lower costs and importing technology to spread economies of scale of production to compete on cost and generate prosperity. Whereas when the world moved to a knowledge-based economy, it operates for a very different set of principles. And our policy, if I may, our policy community did not have an orientation to owning ideas in the last forty years of the knowledge-based economy. And so, they just funded research neutral whether it went to foreign hands or domestic hands, and no other country in the world did that. And that policy law has manufactured last place for Canada in productivity growth and GDP per capita growth in the last forty years, which means you don’t have the prosperity to, pay for the things you want. And we have a beautiful country. We all love it, but it’s expensive. We need prosperity to pay for it. So, my advocacy from the economic realm is that we must have appropriation, controlling, owning strategies for IP, particularly those that are taxpayer funded, which we currently do not we have not had for decades.

DG: Mhmm.

JB: And with the growth of the data driven economy, also strategies to control our data so that we can more fairly participate in the in this new knowledge based and data driven economy.

DG: Where are we, do you think, on the journey of having the appropriate trust infrastructure that we need?

JB: Well, I think I think we have building blocks. Obviously, you and I have collaborated on the Digital Governance Council where Canada it is starting to percolate into the community, the policy community that, gosh, we need to actually front foot our own standards and regulations. I I’m deeply involved internationally, and I’ve got a number of very specific meetings and boards in Europe and Washington that I’m attending to this month. And I see them much farther ahead than we are as a nation. We just have to take this much, much more seriously in in terms of how we govern our data, how we govern algorithms, how we manage identity, how we put in security systems, how we protect the vulnerable, certainly the children and our democracy. I don’t think from a policy point of view, we’ve put this in its proper, intensity of resources and expertise and attention that deserves given its consequences. And so that’s why conversations like this are so important is it elevates the perspective of why of the import at hand.

DG: So when we kind of you know, we think about that, obviously, there’s lots of conversations underway around standards, policy, an ecosystem that really supports, embraces the governance aspects that are required here, and putting the tools in the hands of Canadians so that they can make informed choices, I think, is super, super important. For that to happen, you need the participation right across the ecosystem. So, you need public private sector, you know, with a view of what can we do to leverage these wonderful tools and technologies to be able to address the needs of Canadians in a way that is not going to, introduce additional challenges.

JB: Yeah. Well, you think about it. If somebody’s going to try and build a building in your neighborhood, you have, community input. You have conversations on what works. You have a negotiation, and then you build social license. In these realms, a lot of this is happening top-down thinking that, oh, people just have to trust us, that it’s okay. And it’s like, no. You have to invest in social license. Top down has not always got our best interests at heart. And these are very conscious consequential realms, and we live in an open democratic society. So how are we building social license in this process? What is the consultation consultative realms? And so that’s a part that I’m spending a lot of time on because I’ve learned the power of social license through different realms. And I think there’s some novel approaches here that that will allow people to say, okay. I’m you’ve built my trust now, but I want transparency. I want remedies. I want a persistent relationship, but I’m ready to take that next step with you.

DG: Hmph.

JB: I don’t think a presumed top down is the way to go. And so, I think we can be novel. And I’ve seen in places like Europe, they’ve had these conversations for decade literally for decades. Debbie, you understand the structural elements here that are at play. Could you maybe share with us a little bit of your thoughts on standards and how there’s the navigation between the private gain element and the public good, and how do we ensure that we serve both.

DG: You know, when I kind of think about standards, I would I’d I look at it through kind of two lenses. The first is the more technical lens of if our goal of any product is to be able to reach the user and ensure that it works and it works the same way every time as it was intended to work, then that really depends on interoperability. How do you achieve interoperability through standards? That’s the that’s, you know, that’s the tried-and-true way for us to ensure that we get, ubiquity that, those solutions consistently work in the way that they’re intended to work. So, certainly, if you kind of through that technical lens, that’s a that’s an obvious necessity. But if we look at it more through the lens of kind of a, I suppose, more principle-based lens around what is it that we’re trying to achieve. And, of course, you know, trust is such an important dynamic for the success of any business and society. So how do we do that? These are not easy things for us to solve. So we have to have the ability to have a forum where we can bring together, you know, important perspectives from the public, from the private sector, from, you know, various different socioeconomic perspectives to ensure that on a principal level that we are addressing the right things in a way that delivers, to the end state and an objective which is, I think, for all of us, is an inclusive, prosperous society where we can ensure that we can at least leave the younger generations the opportunity for abundance?

JB: Obviously, the Digital Governance Council is central because that’s a standard setting organization. And in this digital realm, it’s all won and lost on the standards and the certifications against those standards and the remedies, for painting outside the lines.

DG: What about, you know, the corporations across Canada? What do robust institutions need to do when they think about this topic of digital trust?

JB: Well, I think corporate Canada large corporate Canada really has to ask themselves, are they are they doing their part in protecting our vulnerable, particularly our democracy and our children? I do think the larger companies also should come forward and, really say what our appropriate protections are. Because I actually see good rules, as reinforcing of innovation. It’s a false dichotomy that it’s a choice between the two of them.

DG: I love that that balance that you mentioned around, you know, not just standards, governance, regulation, policy, but having that kind of structure that that can also unlock innovation. Right? It’s not a one or the other. It’s it has to be those kinds of insights around policy that’s also going to enable us to continue to innovate and be a competitive force, for the good of Canada. So, what can the people in, you know, organizations, public sector who may be listening to this chat? How can they get involved?

JB: I encourage people to get involved in these voluntary standard setting realms. I think it’s encouraging and pushing our politicians to do the right kind of protections in the legislation. And when you have that, you have a safe and healthy society and a fair market for people to grow their business and buy all these products and export them. But you have to you have to have a reasonably virtual soil if you want to grow crops in it. And we can’t just be harvesting crops and not thinking of the health of the soil. And I think we have soil health issues, and I’m trying to make a case. I think it’s an irrefutable case that let’s join the others in the world in taking this you know, start to take it as serious as they do and be front footed and understand that as a small open economy, we have some particular vulnerabilities that they don’t have in Europe and the US. And so, we actually have to craft more expert, more engaged strategies, use people like you who are clearly a good actor with expertise in this and say, open up your aperture for us, Debbie, and tell us how to think about this system more broadly. How do we as, policymakers really get our heads around this stuff?

DG: Well, I think, you know, a call out to the many organizations that you are championing here is, you know, my experience of working with you is has been fantastic. So I would, you know, anybody listening to this that wants to get involved, please, come on board, and help us figure this out because, yes, there’s too much at stake here for us to get it wrong, but there’s also huge opportunity here for us to continue to, grow the capabilities and engagement across Canada, so that we do have that fantastic, existence that many of us have enjoyed and that Can Canada continues to have an opportunity to help shape, the narrative on the global stage. Before we close, there’s something that, you know, maybe a personal question that I’d like to ask you if you don’t mind, which I’m always struck by when we have these conversations. Why dedicate so much of your time and energy to the topic of trust at this point in your life when, obviously, you could be doing other things?

JB: Well, I I’ll tell you. First of all, I mean, I have a very rich life. I feel extraordinarily blessed. I get to meet people like you. I get to meet work on these things that are so meaningful. I just feel so fortunate. I learn every day. I’m insatiably curious. So, you know, the moral code is that we carry the load we think we can handle. I think I can handle this. It resonates with me. If I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t get to know you. I wouldn’t get to learn. I wouldn’t get to participate in in this. And we all enjoy trees that we didn’t plant, and I think the moral code is you try to plant some trees that that you never sit under.

DG: I love that. I think, you know, perhaps that’s the truest definition of trust. And trustworthiness is, you know, honoring the notion of someone who kind of looks at their duty and obligation to others. And I think it’s a model for all of us, as we as we embrace the challenges and the opportunities, of digital trust.

JB: What brought you to Canada, to decide to spend your life on this?

DG: Like so many Canadians, I’m an immigrant. I came with my family, in search of a better life, and I’ve been privileged to be able to live that life. And I’m, you know, also privileged enough to have a role working for an organization that is also focused on the value that we bring to Canadians every day in the network, and that’s working for Interac. And so, my role at Interac is to think about innovation, and ideas to ensure that we continue to bring value, to the market, to Canadians, to small and medium businesses, the backbone of our of our economy. And the notion of digital trust is key. It’s key to, not only the addressing the challenges that we face in the data economy, but also in really being able to embrace, and deliver on the opportunities. So, Jim, thank you so much. You know, it’s an honor and pleasure chatting with you about this. You’re an inspiration to all of us. Thank you.

JB: Well, you’re very kind, Debbie. And as you know, I’m a fan of yours. So anytime, I’m with you on this journey together. Thank you.