The party also recommended that Ottawa consult citizens before launching any new tech-focused smart-city developments. NDP MP Charlie Angus made the calls in a supplemental report to a House ethics committee report on privacy and digital government services, tabled on Tuesday. The committee heard testimony from both Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs executives to the House ethics committee earlier his year. In a Tuesday release, the citizen-led #BlockSidewalk campaign praised the NDP report for being “highly skeptical” of the Quayside project. On Monday, Sidewalk Labs delivered the Master Innovation and Development Plan for the Quayside project to Waterfront Toronto, which said it would publicly release the document within a week. (Globe and Mail)

Talking point: This isn’t the first time Angus has called for a pause to the project—he first recommended it in October 2018, and repeated it in January 2019. While Angus is making specific recommendations around how to handle future smart-city developments, the Liberal-dominated ethics committee’s calls were less detailed: the group recommended the federal government collaborate with provincial, municipal and Indigenous counterparts to create “guiding principles relating to privacy, cybersecurity and digital literacy” for such projects. Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the Quayside announcement in October 2017, his government has been largely silent on the project.