October 2, 2025
This is an essay about the importance of refusal. As a researcher, I hardly write anymore this way, but I thought I should, in this moment, where the need to document our descent into fascism is critical.
For decades we have been raising the alarm for a better public consultation process. The calls have gone unanswered. Instead, the public consultation process gets erased entirely as it did under the AI and Data Act (AIDA), or it shows up as a check-box mechanism in the current 30-day consultation announcement by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED).
Our lives are increasingly becoming virtual, walled in, polarized and isolated. We do not have face to face conversations anymore. We are forgetting how to hold longer conversations away from screens. We are forgetting how to organize. I worry about this a lot. I want to come back to the idea and process of townhalls. Because it is a physical process. Because townhalls can be held in public spaces like libraries. Townhalls where people without internet, without a smartphone, without the time to fill in a 30-question survey, could go to and state their hopes and grievances on matters related to AI systems and how they are impacting their lives. Town halls held at unconventional hours for people who work multiple jobs, who are caretakers, who cannot contribute to a consultation otherwise.
No public consultation related to AI has been done this way in Canada. We almost had a decade to do it differently. The closest thing to an in-person convening we had was two in person workshops in 2020 held in buildings that required that everyone who entered them sign a non-disclosure agreement. What followed under the AIDA spectacle that began in 2022 were invite only gatherings to write policy briefs. I cannot, then, in this iteration of “public consultation” by ISED get myself to submit anything. I have said my say over and over again. We have said our say, over and over again. Multiple communities have been ignored. Marginalized groups tokenized. If we continue to participate in a mediocre process, a mediocre process is what will be served.
It would be a disservice to continue to engage. I have reached my limit and hence this essay on refusal. Something needs to be done differently. We are stuck in a loop expecting something different. I do not think engaging with a performative, pre-determined public consultation process is it.
Government, in theory, should serve the people. The Minister of AI and Digital Innovation should make the time for the people. Instead of the Empire Club of Canada or the ALL IN industry conference on AI, Minister Solomon should make his case and win the hearts of people across this country that do not have access to those spaces. People that do not call those spaces community.
This is not on us, the AI policy people, to hold townhalls. It is on the government to make time for and encourage local communities and Indigenous communities to organize and hold these spaces. The trust government yearns for will not be gained otherwise.