The federal government has finally released its report from the Standing Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications on self-driving cars and it’s, well, not so bad for government work. Driving Change: Technology and the future of the automated vehicle is the result of almost two years of research and the testimony of 78 witnesses. More importantly, within its 75 pages, it carries the framework of what the future of autonomous vehicles will look like in Canada over the forseeable future.

If the thoroughness of Driving Change’s recommendations are anything to go by, then that future may look very bright indeed. The committee — chaired by senators David Tkachuk, Dennis Dawson and Patricia Bovey — is comprehensive in its analysis of virtually every aspect — from data security to technology implementation, from auto insurance to car repair — of how autonomous automobiles will affect every bit of our daily life.

So, for instance, while the committee members heard witnesses who proclaimed, as has been the media hype, that self-driving cars will be the saviour of inner-city traffic congestion, it paid equal attention to those citing the possibility of increased urban sprawl, the result of, as the report suggests, people tolerating ever longer commutes because “they are able to work productively during their journey.” And while the committee heard from many witnesses extolling the possibility of reduced pollution because “infrastructure connectivity [vehicle-to-infrastructure (V21) information sharing] can mitigate many of the factors that contribute to congestion,” Patrick Leclerc, President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, was able to point out that the very opposite could occur, namely that empty self-driving cars returning home or going to pick up other passengers could create “a new type of traffic called zero occupancy vehicles.”

Jobs, or the possible disappearance thereof, factored large in the senate’s report, again, with conflicting assessments of the future. David Ticoll, a distinguished senior fellow, Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs of the University of Toronto, told the committee that the adoption of autonomous automobiles could “lead to job losses [everyone from cops to driving instructors and truck to taxi drivers] in sectors or occupations that employ over 1.1 million Canadians.” Other business leaders were more circumspect. Wendy Doyle, for instance, Co-Chair of the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, doesn’t expect truck drivers — in most analysis, the most vulnerable of jobs — to be severely impacted. Noting that “there’s already a shortage of commercial drivers,” the association is convinced that there is so much more to the truck driver’s duties that it will take technology a long time to replace “all a driver is required to do.”

Unsurprisingly, data privacy and cybersecurity proved prominent in the senator’s concerns. There were, however, some unexpected twists. One analyst — Scott Jones, deputy chief of IT Security with the Communications Security Establishment, for instance, sees autonomous cars as a wake-up call to Canadians, hoping that consumers finally “grasp the severity of cybersecurity threats” and get them “to reflect on the consequences of failing to take adequate [safety] precautions.” But while all the automakers interviewed professed to have adequate security measures in place to ward off hackers, perhaps the most comforting note was the committee’s recognition that blockchain/public key infrastructure (PKI) will play an important role in warding off “black hats” who might take control of our computerized cars in the future.

If the committee’s report is anything to go by, data privacy may prove a thornier issue for the self-drivers of the future. Driving.ca has already detailed how much information — 4,000 gigabytes per day per car — and money ($1.5 trillion by 2030) will be generated by the data-rich, computerized and connected cars of the future. Some — Blake Smith, director of sustainability for Ford of Canada, for instance — argue that such data collection, because it is so vital to the neural networks that will drive the cars of the future, is in the public’s interest. Others — such as a spokesperson for the British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association — counter that the companies that control the data, be they automakers or their software suppliers, will have an enormous advantage in the future’s data-driven economy. As just one example, Jean Francois Champagne, president of the Automobile Industries Association of Canada, told the committee that such “closed loop” communication — an OEM’s ability to control the messaging to and from a vehicle — would create a “monopoly” that would instruct owners to bring their vehicles only to the affiliated dealerships, severely impacting the ability of independent garages to compete.

As for the technology that will drive the autonomous revolution, the government’s toughest job is probably straddling that fine line between encouraging the rapid growth that will make Canada’s auto high-tech centre competitive while maintaining adequate safety measures on our roads. It’s a delicate balance best captured by Barrie Kirk, executive director of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence, who sees the push from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada as the “gas pedal” stimulating the high-tech industry’s growth while Transport Canada’s safety concerns are the “brake pedal.” No wonder, then, that the report’s first recommendation is that the ISED and Transport Canada “create a joint policy unit” that will “implement a national strategy on automated and connected vehicles.”

One very Canadian aspect of the report deals with weather. With the seemingly constant news from south of the border detailing how automakers expect fully autonomous vehicles reaching the market as early as 2019, the various challenges of snow and ice means, according to Ross McKenzie, managing director of the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Automotive Research, that while a self-driving car that can drive ferry around a city may be only 10 to 15 years away, “an autonomous car that will transport people between cities is likely 20 to 30 years away.”

The one aspect omitted — perhaps deliberately — from the paper is our future right to drive. The report cites, as so many do, the countless lives — actually, 1,700 per year in Canada — that could be saved were all cars computerized. Of course, eliminating all those fatalities would require that we eliminate the fallible humans behind the wheel. So, while former General Motors co-chairman Bob Lutz and others are warning about a far-too-soon future in which we may not be allowed to drive, the senate report makes no mention of whether we will be allowed to operate our cars in the future or not. What’s ironic about that omission is that the report’s opening quote, “We are approaching the end of the automotive era,” is from the same Automotive News article quoting Mr. Lutz, as saying that we have 15 years, “20 at the latest” before governments “look at the statistics and figure out that human drivers are causing 99.9 per cent of the accidents.”

A little more direction in that domain would be welcome in the senate’s next report.