Citizenship in a Connected Canada

A Policy and Research Agenda

Elizabeth Dubois, Florian Martin-Bariteau, Elizabeth Dubois, Florian Martin-Bariteau

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780776629254
• eBook ISBN: 9780776629278
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Public Law
• Index: Law

This interdisciplinary edited collection brings together scholars, activists, and policy makers to build consensus around what a connected society means for Canada. The collection offers insight on the state of citizenship in a digital context in Canada and proposes a research and policy agenda for the way forward.

Part I examines the current landscape of digital civic participation and highlights some of the missing voices required to ensure an inclusive digital society. Part II explores the relationship between citizens and their political and democratic institutions, from government service delivery to academic and citizen engagement in policy making. Part III addresses key legal frameworks that need to be discussed and redesigned to allow for the building and strengthening of an inclusive society and democratic institutions.

This is a foundational resource for policy makers, students, and researchers interested in understanding citizenship in a digital context in Canada.

Published in English.

PART I

BUILDING AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY IN A DIGITAL CONTEXT

CHAPTER 1

Decolonizing Digital Spaces

Alexander Dirksen

Abstract

Power without purpose. Aspiration without intention. Ubiquity without diversity. For too long, we have been enraptured by the promise of the digital age, failing to critically examine the roots, intentions, and impact of an increasingly small number of for-profit firms. In a world where digital spaces play such an integral role in all aspects of our lives, this accumulation of reach, power, and influence poses critical questions and concerns relating to citizenship in a digital context, and in particular within the context of Canada as a colonial state articulating a commitment to reconciliation. In this chapter, I will provide a brief overview of the history of digital spaces through a decolonized lens, a critical step toward grounding ourselves in the current realities and complexities around citizenship in a digital context. Focus will then shift with an eye to the future, identifying potential next steps for researchers and policy-makers so that the private and public sectors can begin to mobilize around a more robust definition of citizenship in a digital context in Canada, one that will serve and support the emergence of decolonized digital spaces.

From Alexa to Siri, we are asking more questions of our devices than ever before. Their soothing mechanical voices are a far cry from the jarring tones of dial-up modems, revealing how seamlessly ubiquitous technology has become in the ensuing decades. We now exist in an era in which an entire digital world is being integrated into our physical spaces.

Yet as we ask more of our devices, the time has come to also ask more of our governing and regulatory bodies regarding digital access, agency, equity, and rights. For too long, for-profit corporations have dictated the terms by which we engage with digital spaces, and have enjoyed largely unfettered reign over these spaces, which have become so foundational to our lives as hubs of commerce, connection, and knowledge exchange. An emphasis on consumers over citizens carries with it considerable implications, particularly for those for whom capitalist-colonial systems were engineered to marginalize or exclude.

While privacy breaches and the spread of misinformation are forcing governments around the world to grapple with such realities, these conversations carry particular weight here in Canada, a colonial construct built forcibly atop the many Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island.¹ In an age of commitments to Nation-to-Nation relationships (Wilson-Raybould, 2017), what does it mean to have such a small set of corporations—whose reach and influence are beginning to transcend that of the colonial nation-state—able to exert such unfettered control and influence? It is clear that we cannot discuss citizenship in a digital age without discussing the ways in which the privatization of the web, data sovereignty, lack of regulatory oversight, and the demographics of the sector itself relate to reconciliation in Canada. How can we begin to meaningfully decolonize digital spaces? And what is the role of policy-makers in these efforts?

We are at a critical juncture in regard to these conversations. If we move forward rooted in recognition and respect of Indigenous rights and in a shared spirit of reconciliation, we can amplify the work of Indigenous innovators across Turtle Island, and, in turn, craft a vibrant digital domain for all. To realize this promise, policy-makers must become more actively engaged in the digital domain, countering market forces that claim neutrality in a complex and unequal world.

In this chapter, I provide a brief overview of the history of digital spaces that decentres its dominant narrative—a critical step toward grounding ourselves in the current realities and complexities around citizenship in a digital context. Focus then shifts to the future, and I identify potential next steps for researchers and policy-makers to take to private and public sectors to mobilize them around a more robust definition of citizenship in a digital context² in Canada. This will serve and support the emergence of decolonized digital spaces.

From Defence to Dominance

Technology is never a neutral force. Behind the sleek glass and metal enclosures of our lithium-charged lifelines are people: the technology sector’s evolution (from its militarized roots to today’s growing surveillance state) reflects the values and beliefs of those people who craft the code that powers our digital age. Meaningfully assessing our current context and potential paths forward requires us to first re-examine the dominant narrative of our electronic evolution with a more critical lens, exposing how the forces of colonialism, patriarchy, and Whiteness have shaped the sector and its offerings.

While Canadian firms have played a key role in the development of what is now the technology sector—from the companies that would become Nortel Networks Corporation (commonly known as Nortel) to the dominance of Research in Motion (RIM) in smartphone development—a more comprehensive understanding of the patterns and trends in tech development comes from an exploration of what’s commonly called Silicon Valley, a small geographic area in Northern California with a disproportionate impact as the home of the world’s largest and most influential technology firms.

How have the specific roots and current realities of Silicon Valley shaped the approach to an general engagement with digital spaces? And what do these trends reveal about the role of policy-makers in ensuring digital spaces are equitable for all?

Silicon Valley: A Case Study

The lands now known as Silicon Valley (loosely defined as the San Francisco Bay area) knew innovation long before the emergence of electronics. The Ohlone Peoples (a modern grouping of a number of distinct Indigenous tribes and language groups) had a deep relationship with the lands and waters of the region prior to the arrival of the Spanish (Spencer, 2018). With colonization came measles and missions—Keith Spencer (2019) notes a drop in the Indigenous population of what is now California from 310,000 to 100,000 people. This disruption and destruction set the tone for the technological “progress” that would follow in future generations. As Spencer (2019) notes:

The differences between the Ohlone and the Spanish ways of life reveal the contradictions inherent to our present-day idea of “technology.” To borrow the Silicon Valley business-speak of today, who possessed more advanced technology? The Ohlone or the Spanish? Who was more innovative? The deep knowledge of the maintenance of the landscape, and the communal lifestyles enjoyed by the Ohlone, meant that the Bay Area remained in a relatively stable ecological state for a thousand years. The incursion of the colonizers disrupted this; they imposed their technological whims and their agricultural logic on the landscape and enslaved and exploited the Ohlone. (para. 11)

European agricultural practices were forcibly imposed upon the region and its peoples at the turn of the eighteenth century, stripping the region of its abundance of plant and animal life and replacing it with farmland and orchards (Spencer, 2018). A second ecological disruption would come as the region shifted from apple orchards to Apples of a different variety, a concrete densification that came in part through military-defence spending in the mid 1950s—ARPANET (the forerunner of today’s Internet) was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Balachander, 2017; Dembosky, 2013; O’Mara, 2018; Tarnoff, 2016). The first transistors produced by Fairchild Semiconductor (one of the earliest and most prominent semiconductor companies in Silicon Valley) were used in the computer of the B-70 bomber, with others used to form the guidance system for the Minuteman II ballistic missile (Laws, 2017; 1958: Silicon Mesa Transistors, n.d.). And the first tenant of the technology park Stanford Research Park was Varian Associates (Findlay, 1992, p. 136), a company whose roots were tied to creating military radar components, including the development of the fuse for the atomic bomb (Lécuyer, 2006, p. 102).

Whether it focuses on Steve Jobs’s garage or Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room, the mainstream narrative about technological development emphasizes human ingenuity, creativity, and innovation as its roots. But without active investment from military institutions for imperialistic purposes (aggravating colonial tensions and solidifying colonial borders abroad), what we now know as our digital age would look markedly different. We cannot extricate the online spaces of today from these troubling roots, and instead must recognize both the harm caused by these efforts as well as the precedent it set for the future of the technology sector.

For as the pace of technological progress in Silicon Valley steadily increased, perceptions around technology began to shift. No longer a niche product for military or academic applications, young upstarts such as Bill Gates had high aspirations for the sector’s potential. It became about more than the mere selling of keyboards and mice; there was a belief that technology had the power to fundamentally transform all aspects of our lives, far beyond the reach of the first Netscape computer browser (Beaumont, 2008). These early aspirations (which have now solidified into a pervasive ideology in Silicon Valley) were evidenced by Apple’s “Here’s to the crazy ones” ad, which posited that “the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do” (Dormehl, 2018). But lost in this clever catchphrase is a deeper truth: that despite a utopian dream of borderless and democratized digital spaces, social inequities and injustices continue to inexplicably determine whether your crazy, world-changing idea will even be heard or resourced. The sector continues to disproportionately attract, promote, and follow the leadership of the most privileged segments of our society. Of its five dominant firms (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google) over 70 percent of their senior leadership teams identify as white, over 73 percent of all staff (in the case of Microsoft) are male, and none have more than 1 percent of their workforce who identify as Indigenous, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander (Brown & Parker, 2019; Apple, 2019; Microsoft, 2018; Facebook, 2018; Our workforce data, 2018).³ As noted by Harris (2018) of Code2040 (a non-profit dedicated to increasing Black and Latinx representatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Citizenship in a Connected Canada
• Part I: Building an Inclusive Society in a Digital Context
• Part II: Building Democratic Institutions in a Digital Context
• Part III: Rethinking Legal Frameworks for the Digital Context
• Conclusion: Next Steps for a Connected Canada
• Contributors
• Index
• Law, Technology, and Media
• Backcover