North Shore sewage plant costs soar, inquiry urged

0:00Hey, thanks for listening to the Jazz Jewel Hustle Podcast today on the pod of $700 million sewage plant now costs $3.8 billion dollars, nor shall leaders want answers, and provincial action. Plus, BC is spending more, taxing more, regulating more, yet productivity is barely moving. What's holding our economy back? And what would actually fix it? Plus, are you one of the 7 million people who bought Metta's AI glasses thinking your footed state private workers in Kenya have been watching Canadians in their most intimate moments will look into what Metta didn't tell you. That's all next on the Jazz Jewel Hustle Podcast. Let's get to it and begin the day with the boondoggle of boondoggles. Now we've all known about the North Shore wastewater treatment plant. It was supposed to cost about $700 million when it was first approved. Today the price tag has exploded to $3.86 billion, one of the biggest infrastructure overruns in Canadian municipal history. Now the project has been plagued by contractors, speeds, design problems, and thousands of

1:04construction deficiencies discovered after the original builder was fired a complete boondoggle. But the controversy isn't just about costs, it's about who pays. North Shore residents, which represent about 8% of Metro Vancouver's population, yet they're responsible for 37% of the project's costs under Metro's cost-sharing formula. Now local leaders warned that could mean hundreds of dollars a year in additional sewer charges for a decade for a North Shore residents. Well today the mayor's of the city and district of North Vancouver took those concerns to Premier E.B. in Victoria making very specific demands as well. Joining us now to talk about that meeting is Linda Buchanan, mayor of the city of North Vancouver. Mayor Buchanan, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks so much for having me, Jazz. Now you met with Premier David E.B. today. What message did you deliver on behalf of North Shore residents? So thank you very much. So yes, Mayor Little and I went, came over today to Victoria and met with Premier E.B. and Minister Boyle, basically with the message that our residents are being asked to pay an

2:10unfair share of the North Shore wastewater treatment project that has spiraled out of control. We have tried to fix this from within, within the structure that we have in place right now and we have not been successful. We cannot do it. So it is time for the province to step in and specifically our ask to him was to establish a fairness mechanism for regional cost distribution on major infrastructure projects to conduct a comprehensive arms length governance review of Metro Vancouver and the GVSNDD with binding recommendations and then thirdly legislative reform and really looking at the reforming of the board in terms of the size, the clarity, clarify the composition and fiduciary duties, mandate and attend third party oversight of Metro Vancouver, GVSNDD for particularly for the major mega projects and then a fairness mechanism again for municipalities.

3:11All right. Well, there's quite a few things there. I want to jump into the public inquiry comment that are the requests that you and Mayor Little made. What questions for you still aren't being answered? So like I'll start with this. This is a project that started at 700 million as most people know and has ballooned to 3.8 8.6 billion, 400 percent more increase and you know what we're not disputing here. There's a cost sharing formula that exists. But under that cost sharing formula, 37 percent of the costs for this overrun is applied to the North Shore when we represent 8 percent of the population. So the formula, we're not opposing the cost sharing formula or saying that it's not that that's wrong. It's wrong is that when it is applied to the overrun, it represents a fundamentally

4:11different commitment than what we agreed to going into this project knowing at the beginning it was 700 million dollars. So it's not, it's not, it's what we're looking for is an equitable mechanism for distributing the overrun, not abandoning the cost sharing as a principle. What have you been hearing from your residents? What are they telling you in regards to the impact of this cost overrun when it comes to what they have to pay? They're saying a lot and we've been hearing a lot and you know we have been, we've been receiving feedback for you know since this number has come out, I just had a gentleman come up to me the other day again Tuesday evening and say you know we're not a resident of mine but of the North Shore to say you know I can't afford this and so really you know it's you know it's a it's a core equity issue in terms of the ability to pay and when we agree to pay the 700 million you know cost sharing formula is not a blank check.

5:16It is not that you can take on whatever the overruns are and not have a really wholesome conversation of what that looks like and what does that mean for us and we know and other regional districts within British Columbia. There are regional governments and member municipalities that discuss cost changes and whether the project should proceed. We haven't had we haven't had those meaningful conversations and you know these numbers are not you know abstract these are real what we're hearing and what we're being told is you know starting of this year our residents are taking on additional costs anywhere depending on a property anywhere from 590 additional costs to just under $1200 additional cost by 2028 and by 2028 what our staff are calculating that for everyone dollar that we are providing

6:17to Metro 72 cents of that is for interest so you know the costs are not going away and the costs that we know are coming from the 10 year outlook are staggering and so we have tried our best to get to the table find a path and a solution forward it hasn't happened and so the province is our next step and we have asked the province to step in. Now you said municipalities never agreed to unlimited overruns do you believe the Metro Vancouver you know treated the formula like like a blank check the funding formula. It has treated it like a blank check so the commitment at the beginning back you know originally when this was first you know talked about and then in 20 in 2010 we have a motion on the books at the city where the council of the day had approved 700 million 2017 when the project started

7:17that's where it was at but basically this cost sharing formula just it just happens to carry on and so we're saying we should not be responsible for those overruns that's the the core equity issue that's the piece that we believe needs to you know those which it's the governance reform that needs to happen in order to have a serious conversation about this and look at what does this mean as we move forward with other major projects this is the North Shore's Iona's coming next so we we need to look to see how we can make this work for for the residents at the end of the day we're all residents but residents have to pay for this but we should not be on the hook for North Shore should not be on the hook to have to pay for this cost overrun. Why I mean you know these mayors well and council as well that are on the Metro Vancouver board I mean we're we're why I guess maybe the question is why why is there a lack of self-reflection here and saying this is

8:20an issue we need to be addressing this openly in a transparent way in front of the public but where do you think this hesitancy is coming from from the board itself when would argue they would have started some some sort of process to look at what happened here I know they've stopped that or installed that or until the court cases dealt with but where is this hesitancy in regards to actually changing the structure of governance for this particular board where is it coming from where where's the bottleneck here well I'm not going to speak on behalf of my colleagues I think that's probably a question you need to propose to each and every one of those you know everybody makes their own decisions based on how they're engaging on regional issues but at the end of the day we are seeing you know in the next 10 year a proposed 25 billion dollars of capital that's being you know as being proposed for the financial plan we are looking at based on the current

9:23the current policy we're going to be hitting a debt service our debt service feeling by 2031 so if this you know there's been myself and others who have been talking at the board to say this capital program is too big right now we need to take a serious look at you know how we're actually how what we're moving forward with and how do we get to a place where we have to make some hard decisions it's too big it's too much it's too fast and again you know if we look at 2035 we are looking at fifth we're on track to how this things are going we're looking at a billion dollars of debt servicing costs a year over a year moving forward it's too much it's too fast it's people can't absorb that we know affordability is the top issue for everyone so serious conversations and yes some of these are regulatory projects and yes but they do need to be done but at the end of

10:23the day you cannot keep just saying we got to move forward in the same way or change a policy so that it allows us to you know not hit that debt ceiling we have to really have a hard conversation of what's what's real and with the problems they need to step in the federal government's not coming forward with money we know DCCs are not at the level that they should be these are all assumptions that are based within the financial plan if they don't come forward then it lands on the burden of the rate pairs and so these are so I can't speak for my colleagues myself and others have been making the case at the table we got some leeway like there is some movement ahead of motion that was passed at the last just before Christmas when we did the budget but again you know these take time and for this the North Shore wastewater treatment plant we're at a time we can't wait for 2027 they've abandoned the review themselves our residents

11:28can't wait we're talking on behalf of them we've been talking about this for two years we've done our best to try to make it work it's not so the expectation from us is that the problem steps in Mary cannon really appreciate your time today thank you so much thank you very much jazz appreciate the opportunity oh british club used to be the grown up in the room balance budget strong credit ratings fiscal restraint is a point of pride that era is definitely over we got record record deficits climbing debt billions diverted to interest payments instead of classrooms in hospitals the bookstore balance and the trajectory matters how do we get here and is there a way back this is BC in the red this is BC in the red on the jazz joe hall show presented by the business council of british columbia celebrating 60 years in business well BC is spending more than ever running big deficits and still falling behind on the one thing that pays for everything else

12:29productivity that's the amount our economy produces for every worker and every hour on the job right now canada and bc you're lagging behind countries we normally compare ourselves to well today on bc in the red we're asking a simple question if we want to protect public services and grow the economy why does bc seem to be creating less with more what do you want to mean out of talk about this issue is can peacock an economist who writes about the bc economy on sub-stack formerly the chief economist and senior vice president of the business council of british columbia can thank you so much for your time today and today we have to jazz well when people hear productivity i'm sure their eyes glaze over a little bit in every day terms what does it actually mean and why should it matter to a family trying to get ahead yeah that's a great question and it is sort of uh one of those terms that does cause people to glaze over i agree with that but really at the end of the day productivity matters because over over the long term jazz it really is the primary driver of of living standards and when we talk about productivity what we're really

13:31effectively talking about is just how much output per hour of work in the economy and when you produce more per hour that means there's more income available to flow to wages and salaries more income available to flow to profits for businesses which in turn can reinvest that back into the business and and distribute some profits and then also more tax revenue for government so it's it's a way of lifting all boats if i can use that metaphor and uh and as i said a moment ago absent productivity gains what you get is stagnating living standards and then people in a population or a jurisdiction are scrambling and and fighting over a fixed pie so to speak rather than a expanding pie so that's the main reason jazz it really is directly linked to well-being and prosperity so bc is spending more than ever so why does it feel like we're getting less economic bang for the buck well a lot of that has to with bc spending more so that's the

14:37government spending more and and taking a bigger chunk from the private sector in terms of higher taxes uh more owners regulations and whatnot so the government alone spending money it can contribute and help productivity you know investing in infrastructure more efficient infrastructure helps improve productivity uh one of the easiest things to think about there is just transportation you know reducing traffic jams making uh goods and services flow smoothly will improve prove productivity but really you don't want government to be the driver of productivity because they're not in a position to boost it it's investment in the private sector and growth and expansion in the private sector that will improve well-being over time so in in this case you talked about uh you know government policy in bc is a problem mainly about government policy or how much should we be focusing on business choices and risk taking as well yeah risk taking so no I mean we

15:38can't we can't delay the the sort of productivity malaise that is affecting as you said Canada as well as bc that although I'd say bc struggling a little bit more in that regard right now um it has to do with a lot of factors just first of all you have to get capital investment without investment economies don't grow um so we we here in Canada and British Columbia is even worse uh have a relatively low amount of capital equipment measured on a per worker basis it's about 60 percent maybe even less maybe 55 percent that of the US so we're lagging far behind the US and just when workers have less new equipment and fewer uh fewer tools and less equipment to work with they just aren't as productive um another reason for bc's weakening productivity and Canada's to some extent but it's easier to talk about it in the bc context is the industrial structure of the economy

16:42so what we're seeing in sort of generalized terms is higher productivity industries industries that produce more value per hour of work are shrinking or contracting or coming under pressure of all this regulatory burden and you can think about the resource sector and think about forestry in particular and growth is being more tilted towards lower productivity industries and that's not to denigrate them anyway they're just uh they use more labor in their production processes and those are things like hospitality sector food services restaurants and things like that they just have lower productivity so as you shift and have more of your economic activity produced in lower productivity more of your economic yeah produced in lower productivity sectors that tends to dampen productivity the regulatory environment is absolutely front and center when it's more difficult to get things done in projects underway that adds costs and chases out investment so all these

17:46things add up and just one final comment and thought before before I turn it back to you the fact that bc has comparatively few large companies is also something that dampens down productivity gains because larger companies tend to be more productive they tend to be exporters and when you export into international markets that really focuses the need to be productive and competitive so you end up getting this lift to productivity from being engaged in international markets more so well you brought it bring up the issue of large companies um you talked to a lot of business leaders and investors what's the number one reason are two reasons they hesitate to put money into British Columbia we've always had a challenge in regards to having corporate head offices here even though we keep telling ourselves it's a great place to live because it is a great place to live we all know that and it is expansive at the same time but why do we have these challenges like what are you hearing from investors and business leaders in regards to one or two things that say I can't invest here or I'm hesitating to invest here or I'm going to take my time investing

18:51here what are the challenges that we that we present to the business community specifically yeah I think top of the list there would be regulatory complexity and operating costs yes you know some of the operating costs are beyond government control high land prices of course come to mind that that's a deterrent if you're trying to purchase a piece of land and set up an operation but this this regulatory burden and the slow approval processes if we accept the the fact that we're going to get productivity gains by focusing more on our resource sector because they are the higher product particularly while in gas the natural gas sector but also mining and also forestry the regulatory hurdles and barriers and uncertainty that those sectors face really do put investment dollars into question and let's remember international operators can look to

19:53other jurisdictions to deploy capital so it's not that they only can invest in BC and Canada they have options and when you become a jurisdiction that's more complicated and difficult with inordinately long delays jazz you tend to look to other jurisdictions to deploy your capital we are speaking to Ken Peacock economists who writes about the BC economy on sub-stack formally the chief economist and senior vice president of the business council of BC we're talking to him about our series BC in the red and today's focus is on productivity and and innovation can one of the interesting things with this recent budget is that we're still spending a lot on infrastructure housing social programs why hasn't that translated into productivity gains yeah that that's a good question it's a lot a lot of it is going into schools and hospitals jazz and so that probably is helping to lift productivity in the in the healthcare sector

20:54it's very difficult to measure productivity in these government areas simply because there's no market prices so statistical agencies have to estimate them but I would say just just to follow through on your comment and your observation the government sector generally typically in the past has had higher productivity than the private sector probably mostly because it produces higher value services such as healthcare services but in the past five years productivity in the government sector has plummeted and it's now just a little bit above above that in the private sector and that reflects the huge number of people that have been hired in the public sector and you're not seeing the corollary increase in output from hiring those I guess they're bumping into each other and the corridors and whatnot so you're not seeing that productivity gain so that's something the infrastructure that you speak of that government is investing in that will deliver benefits

21:55or over the the medium term but again it's it's very mixed I mean we still don't have a massive tunnel completed and if you drive through that corridor you know about those huge long delays so I mean we get we get a lift in some areas but it's by no means right across the board so it's tough to unpack but those are some thoughts no that's that's really important I'm sure there's a few people pulling out their hair right now as they drive through that tunnel trying to get home to to a South Delta or South Surrey or Langley that's for sure so in regards to that the previous question when government is preparing its budget I mean people get excited about hospitals and highways getting built and bridges getting built that's all well and good but if an economist were to prepare a budget you would want a greater focus on productivity in the private sector so one of the things you think we need to be focusing on is here what policies are you introducing that actually will lead to greater investment but productivity are we seeing enough of that in this budget or have you seen enough of this the simple answer is no to that and one of the key reasons jazz

23:02is in this budget not too much attention has been paid to a people have been focusing on the deficits and the big lift in capital spending but if you unpack the numbers and look at them closely the big driver of the massive increase in debt has been the very very large deficits capital spending has added a little bit to the debt but nothing nothing kind of out of the ordinary it is these ten and twelve billion dollar deficits for four or five years in succession that is adding to the debt and it's actually a maybe going slightly off topic here but it's actually crowding out spending in all other areas of government jazz if you look at government expenditures in inflation adjusted dollars per capita per person every function of government is has declined from 2022 through to today and over the next couple years apart from debt servicing

24:07and health care and there's been some very significant declines in the areas of transportation protection of persons and property and the like and most people it hasn't got a lot of attention in the media because because i'm talking inflation adjusted per capita dollars here but the reality is the error of restraint is already upon us when you look at it more appropriately as i said an inflation adjusted dollars and it's only going to get worse in the coming years jazz well um final question to you if you had the premier and finance minister in the room and could get three concrete moves this year what would they be and how would we measure success in a way people can actually see three concrete moves and bring me out the spot yeah well uh there's some this budget takes some steps some some timid steps towards restraint um spending restraint i think you need a whole sale review of government expenditures top to bottom um at just because there's

25:13gonna have to be some savings found i mean to close a thirteen billion dollar deficit is going to be very very difficult um i would continue to advance the large projects uh and accelerate them even more so than they're doing there's lots of talk about frenetic uh etiquette or a rapid pace of bringing these projects online it still seems kind of slow and feels kind of slow the challenge there is large projects alone are not going to save the economy and save the fiscal circumstances they're just not big enough in the economy and the economic malaise in all other areas is large enough and significant enough they won't be saved from that so the other thing the government has to do is turn its attention to the general competitive environment and this is where it gets much more challenging and the politicians are going to need to figure it out because you know we're at the high end of taxes here in British Columbia there's no room to increase taxes but of course

26:16if you're going to eliminate the deficit at some point the likelihood is that they will increase taxes which makes the competitive position worse so they have to find some way of looking to make some tax adjustments regulatory approval uh speeding up regulatory approvals and whatnot to attract more capital investment into the province but we are in in quite a box here because of the size of the deficit jazz yeah and you've laid it out really well in regards to the decisions that are that will be needed uh and very big decisions and tough decisions that's going to take a lot of political will and without that we're not going to be able to dig ourselves out of this that's for sure can I really appreciate your thoughts your insight always enjoy your commentary thank you so much thank you jazz talk to you soon a few infrastructure projects in this region have sparked as much frustration as a North Shore wastewater treatment plant now the project as you all know was first approved with an estimated cost of about seven hundred million dollars today that price tag

27:18is roughly three point eight six billion dollars after years of delays contractor disputes and design problems discovered uh during construction now North Shore residents are quite concerned North Shore represents but eight percent of Metro Vancouver's population yet they're responsible for thirty seven percent of the project's costs under the regional cost sharing formula now earlier today on this show city of North Vancouver and Maryland to be canon joined us uh she along with Mike Little who was the mayor of the district of North Vancouver both of them uh met with premier eb wanted chat with her in regards to the conversation let's take a listen to what Maryland to be canon had to say the message that our residents are being asked to pay an unfair share of the North Shore wastewater treatment project that has fire owned out of control we have tried to fix this from within uh within that the structure that we we have in place right now and we have not been successful we cannot do it so it is time for the province to step in that was mayor

28:19Linda Buchanan speaking to us earlier today what do i mean now is Mike Little a mayor of the district of North Vancouver uh mayor little thank you so much for your time today hi jazz thanks for having me i know you have a very busy day appreciate your make and time first of all do you think the premier got the message oh i definitely i mean uh you know that's one of the benefits of an in-person meeting as you can sort of uh see and make sure that they got the message and the follow-up questions uh verify it uh he did affirm that it's uh uh something they're watching very closely and taking very seriously it's uh uh you know frustrating situation for all of us i think and the fact that uh you and uh mayor Buchanan had to go and speak to the premier also says that you're frustrated with the process at metro van koover you feel the metro van koover board is not listening to the concerns of North Shore residents is that a fair assessment uh i would say so we've worked very hard internally within metro van koover to try to find

29:19uh some resolution or equity in this and instead uh um you know the the review the public inquiry or independent review has been uh the breaks have been put on that uh they can they put the the breaks on that in july of 2025 and so at this point you know short of the court case uh actually going uh the full distance we we won't even know what what happened in this case we won't be able to talk with the public about uh about what what happened that led to such a massive cost escalation what does this mean for North Shore residents in regards to to what they'll have to pay well each of the individual homes will be contributing about seventeen plus thousand dollars over the life of the project um uh and you contribute in a couple of ways one you contribute as a sub-area through what they call tier two funding um uh and on that one we pay 45% of the bill the whole bill for the wastewater treatment plan but we also contribute to the other tiered

30:23funding which is tier three funding which is uh uh shared with the region so we actually have a a very large bill to pay and i think what we find was frustrating about it is that the last time they came and got our consent uh and talked to us about it was when it was seven hundred million dollars and since that time they've they've taken on a tremendous amount more debt without consultation with the North Shore without our consent and we we find that to be just unfair why do you think there's no introspection uh and i'm sure North Shore residents would say a lack of fairness from the Metro Vancouver board on this i mean the fact that you have to go to the premier uh and have this conversation says that so there's something severely broken within the Metro Vancouver board and process why are they not listening and and and do hear anything in regards to how they can justify what North Shore residents will have to pay over over many many years well you know we we all all go around the table and and everybody wears their Metro Vancouver hat is what you say but the reality is you are asking politicians to take on more taxation in their community to help

31:28the North Shore out and um we've only been successful so far at getting about a quarter of the compensation from the region that we've sought so uh the rest of the region contributed uh contributes an additional ten dollars per household um which uh brought our cost down by about a hundred and thirty five dollars for an average home um but we had asked for forty dollars from the region and even that we were going to be the most expensive sub-region within the within the area so that there doesn't seem to be any effort to move towards a single storage district or any kind of uh equitable uh compensation now this isn't just a public inquiry that you're asking for you you also want to review of our Metro Vancouver's decisions are made what would you in in a perfect world how would you like to see that address this is a question the premier coming in and saying we're going to completely redraw what regional government looks like moving forward whether it's through direct elections whether there's less directors whatever

32:31it may be you're looking for a so a complete overhaul of how Metro Vancouver is run is that fair fair assessment uh definitely at the very least some minority rights and protections for the members of the board and then also um making sure that uh that there is a relationship between the people that the money is being borrowed on behalf of uh and and the vote um so having 92% of the region vote uh on a matter for a massive debt load for the other eight percent feels a little bit unfair um it should be decided at the subarea level now there are some who would say wait a minute here when anis asylum treatment plant was being built there was at one time a call for the entire region to deal with that cost and and and the north shore said no it's going to be mostly dealing with the south of the phraser you those communities should deal with the with the costs and this is now in this case impacting the north shore which is probably

33:35going to be using the north shore waste water treatment plant why should we have to pay for it because north shore wasn't very flexible many decades ago when anis asylum was built what would you say to that argument uh in 1983 i was in grade 11 so i we've got some long we've got some very long memories around the metric and the table in those regards but the other thing they may remember that but what they forget is that the difference for them was hundreds of thousands of dollars we're talking about billions of dollars in this case it is extraordinary it does require an additional look at it and some special conditions for it uh the last time they came to us it was a fraction of the price that uh we've now been settled with uh without our consent i'm just shocked that you know when they come to the city as a region story of 700 million dollars and you know what the cost is you've built it in you consult with your residents and the fact that they've never come back to you as a region being the north shore and said look these numbers are

34:38going to balloon can your taxpayers handle this considering you're going to eat 37 percent of this cost i mean uh i'm a bit gobsmacked that there is nothing no process no procedure in place to drive up costs by 400 percent and not go back to elected officials who have to deal with this on a regular basis right from city hall to the local grocery store i'm sure you've heard from residents without grocery shopping i mean i cannot believe they didn't come back to you after that to say is this feasible for your community you know the only form in which they came back was in may of 2024 they asked how we were going to break up the payment and that was where we asked for $40 per household to help the sub area out because if nothing changed we were going to have to pay it all and under the rules and so we did ask for assistance at the time we got ten dollars per household throughout the region and it it helped but it still leaves our community with a massive bill for something that we didn't pick it was handed to us the disputes were you know

35:46Metro Vancouver fired the contractor we had to do a corrective work on the site and there's no question there's been tons of problems with the actual construction of the site over 1,300 deficiencies on the site and so it's just it's coming at us from all angles and we but there's there's we don't have the proper tools within Metro Vancouver is it currently stands to protect smaller sub areas our sub area only is 200,000 people most of the other sub areas have 6 to 800,000 people and so we're not as able to take on such massive deaths Mike little really appreciate you making time for us today thank you so much thanks for your interest Jess America leads the world in medicine development it matters we get new medicines first nearly three years faster five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home and not relying on other countries keeps us safe but China is racing to overtake us will we let them or will we choose

36:48to stay ahead when America leads America cures let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead learn how at america cures dot com paid for by pharma during lows pro savings days save more on what goes into the job add power to your lineup with a free to walk 20 volt max five amp hour battery when you buy a select to walk 20 volt max tool plus get up to 35 percent off select major appliances for world pool maytag and more get the job done right keep more in your pocket that's pro savings days our best lineup is here at lows valid for 327 selection various by location cross applies last tumbling ridge mass shooting has triggered a national debate about how artificial intelligence companies handle warning signs of violence now after meeting with open a i c o sam ultraman premier david ev says governments must establish clear rules requiring a i companies to alert police when platforms detect credible threats let's take a listen to his comments over here today

37:49mr alman is prepared to apologize everybody on the call recognize that an apology is nowhere near sufficient but also that it is completely necessary and the mayor of tumble ridge is going to work with open a i to make sure that any public statements relating to that are done in the way that is appropriate and meaningful as much as possible doesn't retraumatize people in the community and so they are going to do that work together and we're going to help facilitate that was premier david he'd be speaking earlier today now he was also asked by global bc's key pulary on his confidence in tech companies after his meeting with mr alman let's take a listen this technology presents incredible promise promises the potential of a full revolution of the technologies available to people and it's remarkable it also presents threats nobody knows that better than the people of tumble ridge it is the threat of people misusing this tool to be

38:52more effective in killing than they would have otherwise been or more effective in causing harm any number of harms and it also presents significant possible disruption to our labor market and people are anxious about that so like any new technology we need to make sure that it's working for people that people aren't working for the technology and part of that means regulation now open a a i c o sem ultraman has also been speaking with federal a i minister evan solman who says canadian experts in mental health law and privacy should help assess flag chat gpt conversations before decisions are made about contracting or contacting authorities now the issue gained urgency after opening a reveal it had flag troubling conversations with the tumble ridge shooter months before the attack but did not report them to police at the time now outweigh is considering new rules while the province is pushing for a legal duty for a i companies to report dangerous activity what joining us now to talk about this issue and other tech issues is Andy brar tech and digital lifestyle expert at handy and immediate

39:57dot com and he good to see you i just let's touch on this issue at the outset here because i think it's really important for so what what do you make of this meeting that sam ultraman had with david eb today via zoom and also with our federal a i minister evan solman how confident are you that anything is going to come from this well the big question going into this meeting was was a open a i going to apologize because that's what evan solman had also said that he was expecting an apology and so now we know they're going to apologize but the question is sam ultraman is he going to apologize in a statement will he actually go to like tumblr ridge and formally apologize because you know you you can't help but think had they notified the authorities this could have been prevented and what they're saying is it didn't meet our safety threshold so the big question and you know apologies are great but the question is what is that threshold what we still don't know what that threshold is that it didn't meet and what we also learned was when it does meet that threshold they notified the us authorities and then

40:59from the us authorities would have to notify the rcmp so evan solman has said that they are now making changes so that they have a direct line to the rcmp but the the real big question is that threshold when they keep saying it didn't meet our threshold i don't know if we need a public inquiry but we need to know what that threshold was and what did you know and why did you not think that it met that threshold and another interesting thing jaz evan solman said these new safety standards that would they have have committed to they want them to retroactively look at all the other cases and to see if that would still hold true if they should notify the rcmp so we'll see if open i comes back with the report on looking on all the other cases that didn't meet their threshold that should have it's interesting that also that twelve open ai employees debated whether to report this that they clearly something in them said okay this is serious but they debated amongst themselves and but it never got to a point where it went high enough where they said okay we should be letting law enforcement know number one number two you would want clear criteria to say

42:05okay if this is a concern you report this right away and i don't want to have these conversations internally at a company and company policy right i mean that's part of the problem you know law of the land is law of the land this is debating corporate policy at the end of the day absolutely and why is open ai qualifying this if it's a threat or not it should be law enforcement that looks at this but they never did they need a bad phone for the rcmp in the future to be able to say listen we need you to look at this but it's a precarious line that you have you have privacy on your ability to converse with open ai and other ai models that's your part you have a right to privacy but it then you have the public good and at some point if you reach that threshold where it's a danger to the public good you do have to notify the authorities and so if open ai can't make those policies i think they should introduce federal legislation to say if you want to operate in canada these are the rules and this is what you have to do when you identify a threat

43:07i guess yes part of the challenge is that other countries have online harms legislation that covers chat bots but canada doesn't right that's right that's right and can you walk me through just i mean i try to understand this i mean the argument i think the challenge we have before us is the technology has gotten so far ahead so quickly and the government still to be very blunt operating in some sort of analog world that is just miles and miles behind here exactly and and what's unfortunate is it takes a tragedy like this for people to understand like we have to deal with this because if we don't it's going to happen again anytime you have one of these tragedies there's digital breadcrumbs on the internet now that you can look retroactively and say oh these were the warning signs and opening i eight months ago they knew it that person out the shooter after they banned the shooter they the shooter tried to open up a second account and then they they banned that so that should just tell you that there were red flags but again what is

44:07this threshold we don't know and we deserve to know as Canadians and British Columbians now please have had already been to the shooter's home multiple times firearms were seized and then returned i mean i guess the argument can be made that even if open a i had called what it have mattered this time right it's a very complex story we don't know but the the the the the technology side to me is is interesting because do you think we have the power federally even provincially and provincially i'm really skeptical and even with the premier's comments today that we can actually regulate American tech companies who are operating in Canada in a meaningful way especially when they're lobbying the government at the same time and that's the big question and you know AI is a global it's very very hard we're still trying to do this with the social media companies and now we're trying to regulate now the AI companies and the social media companies are also now AI companies so we do need this kind of regulation i do think we might need federal legislator there's nothing open about open AI when they started in 2015 it was a nonprofit research lab to gen to build

45:13artificial general intelligence for the good of humanity fast forward eleven years and we have this tragedy and they are for profit company and it just looks like they might be doing some work with the defense the u.s. defense department now now that and thropic said that we're not going to be you know getting rid of our safeguards but it looks like open eyes is looking at that as a as a big contract so there is nothing open but it's kind of like trump starting a social media company called truth social it's almost like a snl skit that they would call it something like that you make a very good point there i mean it was it started as a nonprofit and now it is a full-profit company and it will look for to maximize value and we got to admit the like multiple multiple billions of dollars have been invested in these companies in which essentially a digital arms race to the point where the entire entire stock market is kind of skewed with so much investment in open AI to find out what those one two or three or four winners are going to be you know this to

46:14me is interesting that look we in this in this case it was an american company and we have an american CEO willing to meet our premier via zoom and our federal minister what if this had and this is the free version of chat gpt there are other free versions of of AI as well what if it had been a chinese company exactly in english yeah right yeah what what could we have done yeah what if it was deep seek the other AI that that we know that was that's a chinese one right that's the english that's the one that really scared chat gpt when it came out because it had a reasoning model it would actually show the reasoning of how it got to your answer and it's still very very powerful it doesn't have the latest chips that open AI does but they just use better math to do that and you bring a big question if that was deep seek you know what would the Canadian government do in in that case so that's where i when i hear a federal minister even the premier saying we demand answers yeah and you've heard it before um whether it's Mark Zuckerberg will it's whether it's a even masquer whether it's in this case um chat gpt with sam ultraman our politicians can't

47:21do much unless we have some sort of online harms bill at the end of the day exactly and i think that's why we have to think about legislation we just can't trust these companies to govern themselves especially when it comes to Canadian safety for speaking to Andy burrotech and digital lifestyle expert at handy and immediate dot com we were just talking about sam ultraman the CEO of a chat gpt meeting our premier art via zoom today and also speaking to our AI minister Evan Solomon federally in regards to what transpired in tumblridge the issue of course gained urgency after AI revealed it had flag troubling uh fat flag troubling conversations with the tumblridge shooter before the attack but did not report them to police at that time so that's one of the issues that we were discussing uh another issue in grutzatek is meta is now facing lawsuits over it's a i smart glasses you may have some have seen some of these advertisements uh the rayman glasses essentially both a camera on them workers in keenia get this have been watching footage from users glasses footage that includes people using the toilet having sex undressing in bedrooms

48:26over seven million people bought these glasses just last year meta marketed them as private and secure your data your control the ad said turns out thousands of sub contracted workers are viewing what you filmed and the face blurring that's supposed to protect privacy doesn't always work uh walk me through this one Andy like what do you make of this okay so first let's explain what these meta glasses are because we've seen this before back in 2012 2013 when google glass came out yes and people look silly by the way they look very very silly but you could tell that somebody was wearing google glasses we used to call them glass holes i would go to these tech events you'd see somebody saw one of the matter of these is a tent event yes some silicone value guys walking around a couple of them i saw them i go you could look like idiot and you know what you do when you see someone like that you turn around you walk away because you don't know if they were recording you yeah now come to 2026 meta got into the game they partner with rayman now they're creating these meta glasses and right around them on the side of the frames are cameras now they say they have a light a white

49:30light that goes on when it's recording or when you take a picture however in certain if you're not looking for it you're not going to notice it and you could also use prescription glasses with these with these uh meta glasses so you don't know if the someone's wearing sunglasses are just normal eyewear you don't know you're being recorded now that big issue is they they take that that footage it goes to their server and the AI tries to detect what it's seeing this is really just harvesting data for oh yes because why do they need that footage right well they want it because to train their AI but at some point the AI can't determine what it's looking at and that's where it goes to contractors in Kenya who then have to do the work of the AI to help train the AI to get better so a lot of people don't realize the way that meta is advertising this is oh you could capture your beautiful moments of your vacation without pulling your phone out to record the video you can do it from your eyewear but this is going to cause a huge privacy problem especially in Canada because we have strong privacy laws here and the person that's being filmed did not consent to that

50:33even though the person wearing it may have signed the terms and services of meta but the person being filmed did not consent to that and if that gets challenged here in BC I can tell you right now meta is going to lose that case now my understanding is the UK data regulator is already investigating European lawmakers are demanding answers and the US lawsuit alleging meta violated privacy laws and engaged in false advertising has already begun over the last couple of weeks so just to clarify so when you buy these glasses and they're available all over the place your purchase in some capacity says I agree that the footage that I have taken will be viewed or meta has access to it in some way deep in there that in the legal ease you have consented to something like this but let's be clear nobody reads the term yeah even lawyers don't read that stuff you just say I agree to these terms yeah you're signed the paper and you move on exactly but this the this is what meta is doing

51:35they're just using these as surveillance devices they're just getting so much data to train their AI because now it used to be what you would type into like chat GPT but now it's what what you see what you're walking around and seeing so let's just say I bought it and I've signed whatever paper and I've agreed to it even though I may not know it or whether I know the fact that I'm filming out on the streets that just say yeah none of those people I'm filming have given me consent to use their images like if I'm filming a movie every one of those people like a real movie they'd have to sign a release right and so you're saying all those people you're filming thousands of people could technically sue or could you part of the class action lawsuit yes and there are guys online right now who are sharing this content that they're creating on the meta glasses they're going up to women and they're trying to pick them up like they're pickup artists and a bar or something like that at a bar or at nightclub at an end of a nightclub they're just walking up to people and talking to them and then they share that that footage online now what's

52:35happening is people are like hey I saw you on TikTok and they're like what are you talking about like yeah you're in this video this guy was talking to you all it takes is one of those people in BC to file a complaint with the BC commissioner privacy commissioner for then that to be enacted where the privacy commissioner would get ahead on this case if they do meta is not going to win this thing because that person did not consent even if the person who bought the the meta glasses consented to that the person that was being filmed did not consent and that will not hold up I'm not a lawyer but yeah I can say but I mean it's just a common sense would tell you and especially if you post something on TikTok and it goes viral and gets to what you said I mean there could be issues of defamation all of that right that's right and in this case there are issues that are being picked up people going to the bathroom but intimate moments between partners or the other person may not know that the person he's wearing that's right but you're not being recorded right yes and not only that jazz not only the privacy but we're talking criminal out criminality because this is voyeurism 2.0 when you can take that footage and then share it online so I don't like

53:38these glasses I didn't like the Google Glass when it came out I I wish this never came out because the cats out of the bag people are buying them and you don't know now when someone's wearing eyewear if they're wearing and they have cameras but I don't know how you can like this can continue if that's way we're headed and we already have cameras in society if you want to catch a moment guess what you have a phone exactly right yes you don't need to be running around with your glasses on filming people yes but the content creators online they love it they love it because it gives you that first person that's a very small minority I know they're they're selling to these folks but I would just think the legal liability alone yes and Mark Zuckerberg deserves deserves all the hate quite frankly the metaverse didn't work for him he's looking for a new the future of computing and this is what he thinks there's nothing Facebook has done besides create Facebook that has actually impressed me they had to buy Instagram they bought WhatsApp which are successful but they had to buy them yeah you're anything Facebook's done well in my mind is probably create Facebook

54:39marketplace that's right right I mean I can't think of anything else they've actually done that's been creative and now they come up with these glasses which is really as you say voyeurism 101 exactly and there's going to be lots of folks I'm sure just lining up in the United States when it comes to a class action lawsuit on this issue and it's going to happen here in Canada too just only about if this hasn't already happened yeah and it shouldn't in my mind and he's as always good to see you thanks to drop my anytime jazz thanks for listening to the Jazz Joe Hall Show podcast don't forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Spotify Amazon or Google podcast or wherever you get your podcasts you can always listen to the jazz Joe Hall Show live Monday to Friday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on 7 30 ck and double talk to you next time hello there Thursdays on global I'm Madeline Matlock she's the lawyer with a legendary name

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