Particle Data Platform
Front Burner

Can surveillance pricing be stopped?

4/28/202627 min

For years, Jim Balsillie has been one of the loudest voices in the country to speak out about how data is being used to concentrate wealth and power, and to manipulate our behaviour.

That’s included helping the province of Manitoba take aim at algorithmic or surveillance pricing, where businesses offer different prices based on consumers' personal data.

As well as being the former Research In Motion co-CEO, Jim is the founder of the Canadian Shield Institute, which is a non-partisan organization that aims to build economic resilience and sovereignty in Canada.

He joins us to talk about his efforts to fight surveillance pricing, as well as how he thinks Canada is poised to give up our digital sovereignty and more in the upcoming CUSMA talks. 

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Clips

Showing 10 of 12
Calling Ford "wrong" on pricing
Canada as a vassal state
Surveillance pricing explained plainly
Why current laws fall short
Pushing back on IBM Canada
USMCA as remote control
Trump as a wake-up call
Why he won’t back down
Data used to suppress wages
Data centers aren’t sovereignty

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Speaker 00:00

    This episode is brought to you by TELUS Online Security.

  2. Speaker 10:03

    Tax season is the worst.

  3. Speaker 00:06

    You mean hack season?

  4. Speaker 10:07

    Sorry, what?

  5. Speaker 00:08

    Yeah, cyber criminals love tax forms, but I've got TELUS Online Security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud, so I can stress less during tax season [chuckles] or any season. Plans start at just twelve dollars a month. Learn more at telus.com/onlinesecurity. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply.

  6. Speaker 20:29

    [upbeat music] This is a CBC podcast.

  7. Jayme Poisson· Host0:33

    [upbeat music] Hey, everyone, it's Jamie. Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEO of Research In Motion and BlackBerry, is my guest today. For years, Jim has been one of the loudest voices in the country to speak out about how data is being used to concentrate wealth and power and to manipulate the way that you and I behave. That's included helping the province of Manitoba take aim at things like algorithmic or surveillance pricing, where businesses offer different prices based on consumers' personal data. Jim is also the founder of the Canadian Shield Institute, a non-partisan organization that aims to build economic resilience and sovereignty in Canada, and we'll talk to him about that as well, including how he thinks Canada is poised to give up our digital sovereignty and more in

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