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“Before we set up a digital layer that locks us into a particular set of policy outcomes for the next 50 to 100 years, I think we need to slow down,” McBride said.

“The architecture that we’re going to set here is going to leave the 12 acres the minute it’s done, and it’s going to spread nationally, or even globally. And I think it’s exciting if we get it right, but terrifying if we get it wrong.”

Sidewalk Labs was selected by federal-provincial-municipal development agency Waterfront Toronto as the innovation and funding partner for the development of Quayside, a 12-acre plot of land on Toronto’s eastern waterfront, which was supposed to be a high-tech smart city development built “from the internet up” according to the original announcement.

Originally, Sidewalk Labs was supposed to consult for a year before publishing a Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) but that process has already been significantly delayed, and the MIDP is now supposed to be published as a draft in the first three months of 2019, with a final MIDP to be sent to Waterfront Toronto for review and approval by the end of the second quarter.

But at the same time, Waterfront Toronto still hadn’t published its evaluation framework, and the agency is still consulting on key issues of data governance, privacy and intellectual property to come up with clear policy for how to evaluate the Sidewalk Labs proposal.

Andrew Clement, professor emeritus with the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, warned that Waterfront Toronto is putting the cart before the horse by allowing Sidewalk Labs to build the MIDP before the governing agency has locked down its own digital policies.