I was inspired to write another post on AV following an exciting talk by Anthony Lacavera. Anthony is the founder of WIND Mobile, a telecommuncations company that he developed to compete with the big three providers in Canada (Bell, Telus, and Rogers). It was an excellent presentation and a good opportunity to gain insights as to the focus within the ICT industry around AV and AI. Lacavera provided his opinion on the Toronto bid for the Amazon H2 headquarters. It was interesting for me to compare his perspective with that of Richard Florida, a prominent urban theorist based at the University of Toronto. Florida has been a major advocate for the locating of the Amazon headquarters in Toronto. He believes it would benefit the city by bringing so called “creative class” individuals to the city, who he argues constitute the foundation of a thriving modern city. Lacavera argues that Canada has a history of being the “branch plant” for international corporations based in other nations. He believes that Canadian success will come from nurturing domestic technology developers. In his opinion, Amazon would bring jobs to the city, but the profits and intellectual property would be transferred to its headquarters in Seattle. He advocates for the development of a domestic industry and uses RIM as an example. RIM was headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario and was a major factor in the development of the ITS industry in that area, including elevating the status of the University of Waterloo engineering school.
This brings me to the topic of AV. As a Transportation Engineer, I am excited about the prospects for reduced congestion and the research questions around sharing of mobility. However, as an amateur economist and aspiring land use modeller, the impacts of changing technology are equally important to me. I have two brother-in-laws who work for US-based technology companies and a father who has been in the industry for nearly 40 years. The question I have following this talk by Anthony Lacavera is what impact AV will have on jobs in Canada. The manufacturing industry in southern Ontario is stagnant at best and on the decline at worst. There are good bones for the development of domestic development and manufacturing of AV technologies, but this will require us to exhibit some modicum of support for our Canadian technology industry. We cannot rely on the branch plant leavings of US companies. Development can occur in Canada by Canadian companies. We should be supporting companies like Urbanlogiq, who are a Canadian company developing integrated software solutions for cities to better organize their transportation data. As per usual, these are simply the ramblings of a doctoral student, but as a proud Canadian I firmly believe in the ability of Canadians to be at the forefront of the development of technology. Look at the Avro Arrow or the Canadarm. I hope we can bring the same innovative spirit to bear in the AV space and encourage job growth and prosperity in our cities.