Evidence of meeting #141 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was waterfront.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
There were frequent communications. You were provided surveys, drawings and topographic illustrations. You signed a non-disclosure agreement. This was all prior to the RFP, so don't you feel you were getting an extra advantage?
Head of Policy and Communications, Sidewalk Labs
Again, we were one of 52 companies they provided information to. Half of the information, depending on how you want to quantify it, they provided to us was also provided to EllisDon. As the independent review by Dentons confirmed, this was information that was incidental to the RFP itself and was publicly available in other forms.
NDP
Head of Policy and Communications, Sidewalk Labs
I think. Effectively, Justice Osborne said the same thing, that the information we requested would have been made available to anyone else. It is conceivable that we were simply more excited about this opportunity and more focused on it than others.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
It is conceivable, because Eric Schmidt said they were really looking for someone to “give us a city and put us in charge,” and they gave you the city of Toronto.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
He did also say—I'm not quoting the Auditor General here, but your boss, so you're going to have to trust what he said—that this project “may require substantial forbearances from existing laws and regulations.”
As a legislator—and we're looking at probably the most prime real estate in North America—when a company wins a bid and says it wants to be exempted from laws, I have to ask myself what laws you are being to exempted from if we're going to give you the city.
Chief Executive Officer, Sidewalk Labs
Let me clarify that. First of all, let me also put some context around your quote from Mr. Schmidt. He was joking. At that point, Mr. Schmidt paused for laughs from the audience. He then said, “it's not how it works, guys. For all sorts of good reasons, by the way. It doesn't work that way.” So the notion that he wanted to be given a part of the city—
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank God for something there. That's good.
What about those laws that he expects to be given forbearances from? I don't know real estate deals that come in and say, “We want to be exempted from Canadian law.” What are the laws you don't like here?
Chief Executive Officer, Sidewalk Labs
It's not exempted from Canadian law; it is for regulations and laws potentially to be changed in order to enable the initiatives that will make possible the achievement of the goals that Waterfront Toronto established.
Let me give you a very simple example.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I'll repeat: “substantial forbearances from existing laws and regulations.” Everybody would love that if they were trying to get real estate deals.
Chief Executive Officer, Sidewalk Labs
Let me give you an example. Right now under the regulations and the building code of the City of Toronto, you cannot have a wood building that is more than six storeys high. We believe buildings of, I think, up to 18- to 20-storeys high are possible, and we've seen it in Vancouver now. They're made of mass timber. We believe it can potentially go higher than that.
Why do you want a wood building? For one thing, they are dramatically more sustainable. Second, they have a higher fire safety rating than steel and concrete.
NDP
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I just can't imagine that Eric was thinking about my mill workers when he said that, but I'm totally into the wood, man. I'm totally there.
Chief Executive Officer, Sidewalk Labs
The biggest thing is that you can reduce the cost at scale by almost 20%, which we think could be a major contributing factor to achieving affordability.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
We find ourselves here because Waterfront comes up with this idea and puts out a bid. You win the first stage of the bid. Then a big question comes up, which is this question of non-personal data. We ask ourselves: Who owns it; who controls it; who manages it; what can and can't do with this data? Suddenly we start thinking about it—which we've never done—and to your point, there are no regulations on it.
Who do you think should regulate it: the city, the province or the federal government?
Chief Executive Officer, Sidewalk Labs
I don't think we have a point of view on that. I think we can see strong arguments for a variety of different alternatives, including, as we've said, a new independent body under the auspices of Waterfront Toronto or any of the three levels of government, or it could simply be an independent entity.
What we believe very strongly, though, is that it has to be subject to a democratic process. Ultimately it's up to you, broadly, to decide where that ought to be. We'll live with it, but the only way people are going to have confidence is not if a company has control—
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
No, I understand: a government.
If I were a developer and we said that the City of Toronto has its regulations, and now we've got to go to the City of Whitby just down the road and they've got their regulations, and then we're going to go to Cobourg and they've got theirs, it would seem to me as a developer, as anybody going this route...like PIPEDA. You don't have PIPEDA for Toronto and then Milton has a different PIPEDA and all that.
It would seem to me that the regulator should be provincial at a minimum, but probably better federal. I would have thought, from a developer's point of view, you'd want one set of regulations.
Chief Executive Officer, Sidewalk Labs
Again, I probably can argue it a bunch of different ways. The City of Toronto has an incredibly competent civil service, and—
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
But then you'd have to go through that same process every time, everywhere.
Chief Executive Officer, Sidewalk Labs
Yes. Again, since I'm not a developer who works extensively in the GTA or—
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
No, but I'm talking strictly about the data perspective. You'd have to re-regulate data every time—
