In February, when the Toronto Star and the National Observer both published confidential planning documents prepared by Sidewalk Labs, critics pounced on the revelations about the ambitious project’s scale. For over a year, the Alphabet/Google smart-city subsidiary, and Waterfront Toronto, the agency managing the project, insisted it would be limited to a 12-acre parcel of land called Quayside near downtown Toronto.
Since stepping aside in 2011, Balsillie has tended to his think thank, the Centre for International Governance Innovation and dabbled in pet projects, such as the Harper government’s quest to find the shipwrecks from Sir John Franklin’s expedition through the Northwest Passage. Today, Balsillie—together with a small army of emissaries—is using the Sidewalk Labs melodrama as a cudgel with which to bash the Trudeau government’s “innovation agenda,” the centerpiece of the Liberals’ jobs and investment strategy.
One damp, grey day in mid-March, a small bulldozer trundles around the muddy property, much of which is under construction. Inside the main house, Balsillie is perched on an elegant couch in a spacious living room, a late-model BlackBerry—of course—resting quietly next to him. A profusion of collector-grade art, including some Group of Sevens, adorns the walls.
Balsillie has systematically assembled a brief that suggests the future is cloudy. Compared to other OECD countries, Canada is falling behind in the number of AI patents it registers. Universities let foreign companies exploit the inventions created in government-funded labs. And multinationals soak up more than half of federal innovation grants. “The statistics are just overwhelmingly persuasive,” he says.
Balsillie’s radicalization occurred six years ago, when he found himself at a tech conference listening to a speech by an extremely senior civil servant. This individual—Balsillie won’t name names, but the speaker was Kevin Lynch, Stephen Harper’s then-deputy minister —was going on about how the federal Tories had put in place the right policies to kick-start innovation following the collapse of Canadian tech giants like Nortel.
Some people think the key is to create spaces where smart people share ideas. Others talk about industrial clusters, because magic happens in regions that attract investors, researchers and companies. Many Canadian universities and business schools are betting heavily on entrepreneur training camps, incubators and accelerators—a popular idea for which Balsillie has no patience .