GC Data Conference 2024/speakers
The 2024 GC Data Conference is brought to you by Transport Canada and the Canada School of Public Service with support from the GC Data Community.
February 21-22, 2024 | Virtual
Keynote speakers
Anil Arora
Chief Statistician of Canada
Anil Arora is the Chief Statistician of Canada since September 2016. He has led significant transformational initiatives throughout his career, with experience and partnerships spanning all three levels of government, the private sector and international organizations, including the UN and the OECD. He has led projects on high-profile policy issues, legislative and regulatory reform, and overseen large national programs. Mr. Arora is currently the chair of the OECD committee on statistics and statistical policy, Vice Chair of the bureau for the conference of European Statisticians, and the Chair of the High-Level Group on the modernization of official statistics. He was named top 25 immigrants in Canada in 2022 and is a sought-after speaker and thought leader.
Jim Balsillie
Retired Chairman and co-CEO, Research In Motion (BlackBerry)
Jim Balsillie’s career is unique in Canadian business. He is the retired Chairman and co-CEO of Research In Motion (BlackBerry), a technology company he scaled from an idea to $20 billion in sales globally. Mr. Balsillie’s private investment office includes global and domestic technology investments including cybersecurity leader Magnet Forensics.
He is the co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking in New York, the Council of Canadian Innovators based in Toronto, and Digital Governance Council, as well as founder of the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, the Centre for Digital Rights, the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and the Arctic Research Foundation. He currently chairs the boards of CCI, CIGI, Innovation Asset Collective and Digital Governance Council. He is also a member of the Board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Advisory Board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre; an Honorary Captain (Navy) of the Royal Canadian Navy and an Advisor to Canada School of Public Service.
Mr. Balsillie is the only Canadian ever appointed to US Business Council and was the private sector representative on the UN Secretary General’s High Panel for Sustainability. His awards include: several honorary degrees, Mobile World Congress Lifetime Achievement Award, India’s Priyadarshni Academy Global Award, Canadian Business Hall of Fame, Time Magazine’s World’s 100 Most Influential People and three times Barron’s list of “World’s Top CEOs.”
Chantal Bernier
Co-Chair and Counsel, Global Privacy and Cybersecurity Group, Dentons Canada
Chantal Bernier is Co-chair, Dentons’ Global Privacy and Cybersecurity Group as well as a member of the Canadian Privacy and Cybersecurity practice group and Government Affairs and Public Policy group. With Chantal on board, Dentons is proud to be the only law firm in Canada with a former privacy regulator as a practicing lawyer. During her nearly six years at the helm of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), Chantal led national and international privacy investigations in the public and private sectors, as well privacy audits, privacy impact assessment reviews, technological analysis, and privacy policy development and research.
In her Government Affairs and Public Policy practice, Chantal leverages her many years in high-ranking positions at the Government of Canada to provide her clients with strategic counsel. Her experience as a senior executive also uniquely positions her to understand corporate management challenges in both the public and private sectors to find solutions that serve corporate interests and comply with the law. She serves clients in French, English, Italian and Spanish, and is very active at the international level.
Kristina Casey
Chief Service and Digital Officer, Transport Canada
Kristina Casey joined Transport Canada in April 2023 as Chief Service and Digital Officer.
Kristina comes to Transport Canada from Shared Services Canada where she served as Assistant Deputy Minister, Client Service Delivery and Management. In this role, she was responsible for ensuring that SSC services were well positioned to enable partners in delivering their programs and services to Canadians. This involved managing partner requests, prioritizing activities and incidents, and advocating for GC enterprise services while ensuring that partner-specific needs were met.
Kristina previously occupied the position of Chief Information Officer and Director General, Information Management and Technology at Global Affairs Canada (GAC). She led information and technology services to clients at GAC headquarters, as well as at sites across Canada and at Canada’s missions abroad.
In earlier work at Natural Resources Canada, Kristina was known for her leadership in advancing the department’s information management and information technology transformation. She has more than 15 years of experience in developing, managing and delivering information management and information technology.
Timnit Gebru
Computer Scientist
Dr. Timnit Gebru is a researcher in artificial intelligence, working to reduce the potential negative impacts of AI. Until her recent firing from Google which ignited a labor movement resulting in the first union to be formed by tech workers at Google, Timnit co-led the Ethical Artificial Intelligence research team. Prior to her work at Google, she did a postdoc at Microsoft Research, New York City in the FATE (Fairness Transparency Accountability and Ethics in AI) group, where she worked on algorithmic bias and the ethical implications underlying projects aiming to gain insights from data.
Timnit received her PhD from the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where her thesis used large-scale publicly available images to gain sociological insight, and addressed computer vision problems that arise as a result. This work won the 2017 LDV Capital Vision Summit competition.
Prior to her PhD Timnit worked at Apple designing circuits and signal processing algorithms for various Apple products including the first iPad, and spent one year as an entrepreneur. After experiencing the dire lack of representation in the field of artificial intelligence, Timnit co-founded the nonprofit Black in AI, which works on initiatives to increase the presence, visibility and wellbeing of Black people in the field of AI.
Timnit’s work has been covered by outlets ranging from the New York Times to The Economist, and she has been named to notable lists such as the Bloomberg 50, Wired 25, and Forbes 30 inspirational women. Most recently, she was awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s pioneer award along with Joy Buolamwini and Deborah Raji.
Valerie Gideon
Deputy Minister, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and President of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario
Dr. Valerie Gideon is a member of the Mi’kmaq Nation of Gesgapegiag, Quebec and a proud mother of 2 young girls.
She became Deputy Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada on November 25, 2023, and kept her position as President of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario. From September 2020 to October 2022, Valerie was the Associate Deputy Minister of Indigenous Services Canada. From 2018 to 2020, she was the Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch (FNIHB), Indigenous Services Canada. From 2012 to 2017, Valerie held the position of Assistant Deputy Minister, Regional Operations, Health Canada. From 2011 to 2012, she was Director General, Strategic Policy, Planning and Analysis at FNIHB. From 2007 to 2010, she held the position of Regional Director for First Nations and Inuit Health, Ontario Region, Health Canada.
Before working at Health Canada, her experience consisted mainly of working in First Nations health advocacy as Senior Director of Health and Social Development at the Assembly of First Nations and Director of the First Nations Centre at the National Aboriginal Health Organization. She was named Chair of the Aboriginal Peoples’ Health Research Peer Review Committee of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in 2004.
She graduated from McGill University (Montreal) in 2000 with a Doctorate (Dean’s List) in Communications (dissertation on telehealth and citizen empowerment). She previously completed a Master of Arts in 1996 at McGill. She’s a founding member of the Canadian Society of Telehealth. She’s also a former board member of the National Capital Region Young Men’s Christian Association and Young Women’s Christian Association.
John Hannaford
Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet
John Hannaford was named the 25th Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet on June 24, 2023.
Prior to becoming Clerk, John served as Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Canada, from 2022 to 2023, where he helped advance some of the government’s signature clean energy initiatives.
He contributed to the public service for the preceding two decades representing the Canadian government on key international files, from free trade to foreign and defence policy.
After graduating from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in history, he earned a Master of Science in international relations at the London School of Economics, before completing a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Toronto.
John joined the federal public service’s Department of Foreign Affairs as a newly minted lawyer in 1995, working on a range of issues including maritime jurisdictions, environmental law and trade.
His following career included being Deputy Minister of International Trade at Global Affairs Canada from 2019–2022, after having served in several high-profile senior leadership positions in the public service, including:
- Foreign and Defence Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister (2015–2019);
- Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet of Foreign and Defence Policy in the Privy Council Office (2012–2015); and
- Ambassador of Canada to Norway (2009–2012).
John’s first act as Clerk was to launch a broad discussion on public service values and ethics to ensure the civil service is equipped to serve Canadians’ changing needs in today’s dynamic and increasingly complex environment.
He believes the values of the public service are the cornerstone of our democracy and the compass to ensure “the peace, order and good government” it provides remain relevant and real to every Canadian, every day.
He is married to Anne Lawson. Together they have two adult children.
Jennifer Pahlka
Founder, Code for America
Jennifer Pahlka is the former deputy chief technology officer of the United States and the founder of Code for America, a nonprofit that believes government can work for people in the digital age. Pahlka is the winner of a Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, among others, and has been selected by Wired magazine as one of the people who have most shaped technology and society in the past twenty-five years.
Gina Wilson
Deputy Minister, Indigenous Services Canada
Gina Wilson is a grandmother, a proud Algonquin and is the Deputy Minister of Indigenous Services Canada.
Gina began her career in her First Nation community of Kitigan-Zibi as Director of Health and Social Services. She was also Child Welfare Advisor, Director of Health & Social Services and then Chief Executive Officer when she is with the Assembly of First Nations.
She joined the Federal Government in 1996 and held several senior executive positions at various departments, including the Privy Council Office, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and the Correctional Service of Canada.
One of her career highlights was as Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM), Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada where she oversaw the implementation of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and the Prime Minister’s Apology to Survivors of Residential schools in 2010.
She then became Senior ADM of Regional Operations at the then Indian & Northern Affairs Canada, until she moved to Public Safety Canada as ADM, Emergency Management.
Gina was ADM of Treaties and Aboriginal Government at INAC before joining the Deputy ranks in 2014 as Associate Deputy Minister (DM) at ESDC, Associate DM at Public Safety, then Deputy Minister of Women & Gender Equality in 2017. She was appointed DM of Public Safety Canada in 2019.
Gina was in the role of DM, Diversity and Inclusion and Youth, Canadian Heritage, and rejoined Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) as DM on September 1, 2021. She previously served at WAGE from 2017 to 2019, where she led the establishment of the new department.
Gina is the recipient of the 2020 Indspire Award for her leadership and her lifelong work on Indigenous issues and support for Indigenous employees. She holds a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Ottawa.
Shoshana Zuboff
Author, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School
Scholar, writer, activist Shoshana Zuboff is the author of three major books, each signaling a new epoch in technological society. Her recent masterwork, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, available in 26 languages, has been hailed as the tech industry’s Silent Spring, the Das Kapital and the Wealth of Nations of the 21st Century. Her work has been recognized with the Axel Springer Award (2019), the EPIC Lifetime Achievement Award (2021), and the inaugural Global Privacy Assembly Giovanni Buttarelli Award (2021).
Professor Zuboff has received honorary degrees from the University of Amsterdam and the Copenhagen Business School. She is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emeritus Harvard Business School, a faculty associate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights, and the Co-chair of the Prefiguration Committee of the International Observatory on Information and Democracy.
Speakers
Kaveh Afshar-Zanjani
Executive Director, Data Strategy, Chief Data Office, Canada Border Service Agency
Kaveh is the Executive Director, Data Strategy, at Canada Border Service Agency’s Chief Data Office, where he leads strategic planning and implementation of enterprise data and analytics for the Agency. He joined the Agency in Spring 2020 as the Director, Data Science. His expertise is in use of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence to support and drive policy and operational decision making. He has been involved in analytics and data science for over ten years in both academia and government.
Before joining CBSA, Kaveh worked at Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Chief Data Office, where he led the development of Departmental Data and Analytics Strategy. He has worked at a number of other Government of Canada departments, including the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Employment Social Development Canada. He is a graduate of McGill, uOttawa, and Queen’s University.
Benjamin Alarie
Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Law; Specialist, Legal Innovation, Blue J
Benjamin Alarie, M.A. (Toronto), J.D. (Toronto), LL.M. (Yale) is an expert in tax law, judicial decision-making, machine learning, and the future of law and technology. Before joining the Faculty of Law, Professor Alarie was a graduate fellow at Yale Law School (2002-2003) and a law clerk for Madam Justice Louise Arbour at the Supreme Court of Canada (2003-2004). Over the years his publications have appeared in numerous academic journals, including the British Tax Review, the Canadian Tax Journal, and the American Business Law Journal. His research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. He is coauthor of several editions of Canadian Income Tax Law (LexisNexis) and was awarded the Alan Mewett QC Prize for Excellence by the JD class of 2009. He is co-author (with Andrew J. Green) of the leading study of comparative empirical supreme court decision-making practices, Cooperation and Commitment on High Courts (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is an affiliated faculty member of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
Professor Alarie is co-founder and CEO of Blue J, a leading North American legal tech company specializing in artificial intelligence, legal prediction, and intelligent diagramming. He combines academic scholarship with legal technology through his monthly column in Tax Notes, entitled Blue J Predicts, where he analyzes recently decided and pending U.S. tax cases using machine learning. An educational Hot Docs / uDocs documentary, The A.I. Taxman, recounts the early Blue J story and outlines a vision of how artificial intelligence is likely to affect tax law in the coming decades.
Professor Alarie is co-author (with Abdi Aidid) of The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better (University of Toronto Press, 2023), available from Amazon and the University of Toronto Press. See some of the book’s pre-publication press: Law360, the University of Toronto.
Moderators
Kara Beckles
Executive Director, Privacy and Responsible Data Division, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
Kara Beckles is the Executive Director within the Privacy and Responsible Data Division at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS). As an active and experienced data leader in the Government of Canada, Kara has held various executive positions across the public service, including Chief Data Officer and Director General of Data and Information Services at the Privy Council Office (PCO), Director General of Data Integration in PCO’s Result and Delivery Unit, and Chief Economist at Agriculture and Agri-food Canada. She has also held various strategic, policy and analytical roles at Finance Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat, Statistics Canada, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and PCO. Kara holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics and business from the University of Winnipeg and a Master of Arts in economics from Dalhousie University.
Stephen Burt
Chief Data Officer of Canada, and Assistant Deputy Minister of Digital Policy and Performance
In March 2022, Stephen Burt was appointed Chief Data Officer for the Government of Canada, at the Treasury Board Secretariat. His mandate is to provide leadership within the federal government across all aspects of managing information and data. This includes protective policy elements for privacy and responsible use of data-driven technologies, and policy elements related to transparency such as access to information and open government, including GC enterprise tools for data and information sharing. The CDO also oversees policy and guidance for data-enabled digital services and programs, including foundational information management and data governance practices across federal departments.
Prior to this appointment, Mr. Burt was the functional authority for data governance and analytics capability for the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF). He drove the analytics adoption and maturity throughout DND/CAF, and led the department-wide initiative to establish analytics and data governance.
Mr. Burt began his career in the Government of Canada in 1997 with Revenue Canada. In 1999, he joined DND, where he worked in a variety of policy, operational and defence intelligence roles, including two years as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Minister.
Mr. Burt moved to the Privy Council Office (PCO) in 2007 to work in the Security and Intelligence Secretariat as Senior Advisor on National Security. In that role, he was secretary for the committees of the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister. In 2009, he joined the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat (IAS) at PCO, and held positions as Director for Afghanistan and, later, for Asia. Mr. Burt was appointed Director of Operations for the IAS in January 2012, and took on the position of Assistant Secretary on an acting basis in March 2014.
In April 2015, Mr. Burt assumed the role of Assistant Chief of Defence Intelligence at Canadian Forces Intelligence Command, where he led the federated production of intelligence within DND/CAF, and oversaw defence intelligence policy.
Mr. Burt has an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Ottawa, as well as a Master’s in Public Administration from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Karine Duhamel
Director of Indigenous Strategy, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Dr. Karine Duhamel (she/her) is an Anishinaabe-Métis historian and an off-reserve member of Red Rock Indian Band in northwestern Ontario. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Education, as well as a Masters degree and Ph.D. in history. She has extensive expertise and experience in dialogue-based approaches to research and engagement, including in her role as Director of Research for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) from 2018 to the end of its mandate in 2019 and as Chair of the National Action Plan Data Sub-Working Group from 2020 to 2021. In 2021, she was awarded the Bruce and Lis Welch Community Dialogue Award through the Simon J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University. In 2022, she joined the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as Director of Indigenous Strategy, working to implement the Strengthening Indigenous Research Capacity initiative to better support Indigenous research and research training in Canada. In addition to her role as a public servant, she is an official Speaker for the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba, an Indigenous fellow at Simon Fraser University, and a Research Affiliate of the Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba.
Eric Rancourt
Assistant Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada
Eric Rancourt is Assistant Chief Statistician for the Strategic Data Management, Methods and Analysis Field at Statistics Canada. He is also Statistics Canada’s Chief Data Officer.
He has worked at Statistics Canada for 33 years and has occupied several roles such as Director General of the Modern Statistical Methods and Data Science Branch, Director General of Strategic Data Management, Director of International Cooperation, Director of Corporate Planning, Head of research, Production manager of Survey Methodology Journal, and Researcher.
His main areas of work have been on the treatment of nonresponse, estimation, and the use of administrative and alternative data in statistical programs. Recently he has worked on frameworks for optimizing privacy and information, data ethics, and modern statistical designs.
He holds a BSc in Statistics from University Laval, BAs in Arts (Ancient Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies), as well as a BA in philosophy from the University of Ottawa focusing on data ethics. He is Chair of the Board for the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI). He has been involved in many professional associations including the International Association for Survey Statisticians (IASS) for which he is Vice-President, and the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS) and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). He is Chair-Elect for the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and he is also a member of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC).
Taki Sarantakis
President, Canada School of Public Service
Taki Sarantakis has been President of the Canada School of Public Service since July 2018, having previously served as Associate Secretary of the Treasury Board at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Mr. Sarantakis spent most of his career at Infrastructure Canada, including as Assistant Deputy Minister of Policy and Communications.
In 2011 Mr. Sarantakis was awarded Canada’s Public Service Award of Excellence in Public Policy, and in 2013 he was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
Prior to joining the federal government, Mr. Sarantakis was a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from York University in Toronto, as well as an Executive Certificate in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is a graduate of the Rotman School of Management’s Institute of Corporate Directors Education Program, holding the ICD.D designation.
Vanessa Vermette
Vice-President, Innovation and Skills Development, Canada School of Public Service
Arun Thangaraj was appointed Deputy Minister of Transport on February 20, 2023.
Vanessa Vermette is currently the Vice-President of Innovation and Skills Development at the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS). In this role she is responsible for the Digital Academy, Transferable Skills, and Public Sector Innovation teams. She has also served as the Director General of Communications and Engagement at the CSPS, and has served in other executive positions at the School and at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. In addition, she has worked at the Public Health Agency of Canada, Transport Canada, and Infrastructure Canada in both policy and communications and has over 20 years of experience in the public service. In her current role, Vanessa actively supports the Government of Canada’s digital and data mandate and its digital and data communities, and leads efforts to advance digital government and public sector innovation through learning. Vanessa is the first Chair of the Digital Governance Standards Institute, Canada’s only accredited standards development body focused exclusively on setting and managing digital technology governance standards. Vanessa holds a Master’s of Public Health from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and is passionate about equipping public servants with the skills and tools they need to succeed in meeting the needs of Canadians.
The program and list of speakers are available at Canada.ca/data-conference.
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