Jim Balsillie donates $5 million to Wilfrid Laurier University to kick start digital sovereignty

Jim Balsillie, the Canadian businessman and philanthropist, has donated $5 million to Wilfrid Laurier University for the establishment of a digital governance initiative to build economic resilience and digital sovereignty. “The nature and the structure of the global economy and global security has shifted foundationally in the last 30 years in a degree and rapidity that’s unprecedented in mankind,” said Balsillie in an interview. “And if you want to be a sovereign and secure and prosperous nation, you need the capacity for navigating that on a front-footed basis. So, this investment is all about that.” In a news release, the university in Waterloo, Ont., said Canada needs to “shape policy and increase productivity amid growing threats to sovereignty and security.” It said the Balsillie donation will go toward setting up a legal advisory centre that tackles international trade and technology governance, and establishing professional training programs and a proposed graduate degree that focuses on “law, digital sovereignty and global technology governance.” “This is about building capacity to manage the expertise into these realms that are digital, whether it’s AI, data, blockchain currencies, intellectual property, trade agreements, all of these things are the realms that this is contended, and Canada has had an eroding prosperity, it’s had an eroding sovereignty because the terrain of protecting and advancing those is the digital realm,” said Balsillie, the former co-CEO of Research in Motion, the company that developed the Blackberry. He said the digital initiative is a “natural addition” to the school, which is also home to the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a joint project of Laurier, the University of Waterloo and the Centre for International Governance and Innovation. Deborah MacLatchy, the president and vice-chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier, said the funding will “stand up” the work students and faculty are doing on the topic of the digital future. While figures aren’t yet known, the university hopes to add faculty and more students because of the new research and educational initiative. “We’re hearing a lot from companies, from government, about their capacity needs, meaning that they just don’t feel that they have all the internal expertise or the up-and-coming expertise of students and grad students who have experience in this area,” said MacLatchy. “And this gift will really allow us to really take a take a run at this in a way that will be unique across the country.” The hope is that other Canadian universities will eventually follow Laurier’s lead, doing more research and education in the area. The issue of digital sovereignty, said Ann Fitz-Gerald, director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, is “about taking control of a state or any organization’s digital destiny and autonomy.” This includes not just corporate data security or intellectual property or cross-border data transfer but also issues of national security, Fitz-Gerald said. “There’s a big policy shift towards the intangibles from the tangibles, and we need to make sure policymakers worldwide, not just in Canada, have the knowledge and skill sets to operate in this space,” Fitz-Gerald said. So much of what happens in a modern society, from immigration to business to justice, happens in the digital world and is driven by data. And so Balsillie’s donation, Fitz-Gerald said, will help position Canada and Wilfrid Laurier and the Waterloo region at the forefront of that economic, social and political revolution. Indeed, as data can be siphoned off by corporate giants to aid foreign economic development, Canada could wind up being a loser unless it builds expertise in digital sovereignty. “The best way that I have come to be able to explain it is that we have had, for time immemorial, a policy orientation and governance structures that are fit for a tangibles world. We now live in an intangibles world,” said Fitz-Gerald. “We want to be able to manage its development and have a real … say in its safe and responsible development, and the safety and responsibility relates to the preservation of our sovereignty and national security and prosperity.”

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