Industry committee  I think we're almost there. I think, first of all, that it is laudable that this legislation is taking that trade-off seriously and that it's not being too technology-specific. I think it needs some more specificity than it currently has, and it can do that while maintaining its technological neutrality.

Industry committee  I think we would have enormous benefits from the AI commissioner's being an independent officer. An alternative, a second-best, would be to offset some of the powers that are now vested in the AI commissioner onto the tribunal, which is set up as an independent entity, but to have a better composition of the tribunal, we could increase the proportion of experts that occupy positions in the tribunal to compensate for that.

Industry committee  Yes. I think we could have a system that operates like the Privacy Commissioner's. Under the structure of the proposed bill, we could have, for example, the AI commissioner carrying out investigations and then the tribunal enforcing the fines.

Industry committee  I think the main onus should be risk mitigation. This can go back to the principles of fairness, transparency and accountability that we were talking about at the very beginning of the session. It is important that creators and developers of AI systems keep track of the risks they create for a wide variety of harms when they are deploying and developing those systems, and that we have legal frameworks that will hold them accountable for that.

Industry committee  I think part of the answer to that is correctly following the risk-based approach that this act is taking. This is because with a risk-based approach based on standards, rather than trying to makes specific rules for the specific technologies we have now versus the ones we'll have in five years, we'll be able to adjust as the technology changes.

Industry committee  Yes. Perhaps I can quickly add something to your prior question besides agreement with the prior three responses. An environment like you brought up is a great example. In environmental law, years ago, we thought that regulating was challenging, because we mistakenly thought that the costs were local but the harms were global.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  Thank you.

Industry committee  Of course. The directive on automated decision-making explicitly recognizes that harms can be done to individuals or communities, but when it defines harm in proposed subsection 5(1), AIDA has repeated references to individuals for harm to property and for economic, physical and psychological harm.

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the invitation to share with the committee my thoughts on Bill C-27. I'm appearing today in my personal capacity. Mr. Chair has already introduced me, so I'm going to skip that part and say that it is crucial that Canada have a legal framework that fosters the enormous benefits of AI and data while preventing its population from becoming collateral damage from it.