A new provincial appointee to the Waterfront Toronto board says despite strong ties to a prominent Sidewalk Labs critic, he has no bias or preconceived ideas about the “smart city” proposal that Google’s sister firm is working on.

Andrew MacLeod, Postmedia CEO and former senior vice-president and managing director for Research in Motion (later renamed BlackBerry), was one of four people appointed this past week by the provincial Conservative government. Former RIM CEO Jim Balsillie has been a fierce critic of the Sidewalk Labs project.

In December, the province fired several provincial appointees to the Waterfront Toronto board shortly after provincial auditor general Bonnie Lysyk issued a report highly critical of Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto. Lysyk urged the province to “reassess” the partnership between Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs.

The two have formed an “innovative partnership” in which Sidewalk is developing a controversial proposal for a data-driven residential neighbourhood on the waterfront, one that must be approved by Waterfront Toronto.

The other appointees are:

Patrick Sheils, Laurentian Bank Securities co-president; Kevin Sullivan, deputy chairman of GMP Capital; Christopher Voutsinas, former head of international real estate investments at SEDCO Capital. The appointments take effect immediately.

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MacLeod’s appointment to the Waterfront board stands out because of his relationship with Balsillie, whom he worked under for about 13 years at RIM.

Balsillie, who resigned from RIM as co-CEO in 2012, wrote a scathing opinion piece for the Globe and Mail late last year. He said “Sidewalk Toronto is not a smart city. It is a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism attempting to bulldoze important urban, civic and political issues.”

MacLeod said he is “proud to call Jim Balsillie a friend.”

“He’s been a mentor,” MacLeod said in an interview Saturday. “He is an iconic Canadian guy who built a global technology success story. I remain in contact with him and he’s a mentor to me, and I’m proud to be associated with him.

MacLeod went on to say Balsillie has “a lot of strong opinions on a lot of different topics. I will always listen to someone like Jim Balsillie. However, I am my own man. I have my own career, my own objectives. I expect and fully intend to exercise independent judgment on all these matters” on the Waterfront board.

He added that he has “no fundamental bias” against Google or Sidewalk.

MacLeod said the Sidewalk project has clearly demonstrated that Canada needs its own rules around data privacy and intellectual property rights, compared to Australia and European countries who are tackling these areas “head on.”

“The federal level of government must adjudicate these matters,” MacLeod said, calling for a framework in which tech companies in Canada and governments at all levels can operate.

Documents leaked to the Star last month revealed that Sidewalk Labs is interested in building its tech neighbourhood beyond a 12-acre plot of land at the east end of Queens Quay. The documents showed Sidewalk wants to develop on 350 acres in the Port Lands.

But a senior provincial official told the Star at the time there is “no way on God’s green earth that Premier Doug Ford would ever sign off on handing away” so much prime waterfront land to “a foreign multinational company.”

Another of the new provincial appointees also has a BlackBerry connection — Kevin Sullivan’s company, GMP Capital, took RIM public years ago, according to reports. However, a 2010 news story indicates GMP had lowered its long-term confidence in RIM.

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Shauna Brail, an expert on tech and innovation and an associate professor in University of Toronto’s urban studies program, said it’s too soon to know the impact of the four provincial appointments on Waterfront Toronto’s decision making and Sidewalk Labs.

She called it disappointing in a diverse city that “all of the provincial appointments to the board of Waterfront Toronto are men.

“Yes, some have ties to RIM, whose co-founder has been outspoken and highly critical of the relationship between Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs,” Brail said. “However, (the four appointees) are all professionals and leaders with deep experience in real estate, finance and technology. Hopefully their appointments will bring stability and renewed momentum to Waterfront Toronto.”

The four will join seven other board members and Toronto developer Steve Diamond, a member expected to officially become chair later this month. The chair makes $30,000 a year and members $5,000 annually, plus $500 per board meeting.

In early January, Postmedia named MacLeod CEO. He took over from Paul Godfrey, who is now the media company’s executive chair.

When the appointment was announced, Godfrey touted MacLeod’s digital prowess, telling the National Post MacLeod “deserves the title. He (has) performed. He (has) grown digital advertising double digits for the last eight quarters.”

MacLeod came to the company in 2014 as chief commercial officer, after holding the senior position at BlackBerry.

Like most mainstream media outlets, Postmedia, owner of the National Post and dailies across the country, has had to grapple with Facebook and Google hiving away most of the digital ad money.

Voutsinas is an experienced executive in real estate and investment management, in Canada and abroad. The founder of Capital Value & Income Corp. has served in senior positions at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and most recently SEDCO Capital in England.

In Ontario, Voutsinas sat on the provincial advisory committee of Telus, and served as global head of investment for Oxford Properties Group, a real estate branch of the OMERS pension fund.

In 2013, he joined the board of Build Toronto (now CreateTO) and was appointed its chair, backed by then city councillor Doug Ford. He served for two years.

Sullivan is deputy chairman at GMP Capital. He was CEO between 1999 and 2010 and is credited with growing its value from $300 million to over $1 billion. Sullivan worked for a few years as a lawyer in Calgary.

Sheils has over 25 years’ experience in capital markets and his responsibilities have covered areas such as debt markets, derivatives, foreign exchange and sales, according to his profile on the Laurentian Bank Securities website.

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