Thank you.
I also have one pen. Let’s see. That’s from the university.
It will be great to see if perhaps you could come even at the ministry and give a talk there. It will be very interesting and honored. Perfect.
The other capacity is that I work at the Ontario government, and there it’s much harder to change. The people are not as open to radically different ways. Maybe next time you visit physically...or we could explore them virtual...
I have two capacities. One is a little bit easier to talk about these things, which is the academic. I’m a business student at the University of Toronto, focusing on innovation policy.
Thank you so much.
Perfect. This is great.
Yeah.
I’m trying to see if there’s a nexus, a connection between that and technology. The role of government in shaping social norms for the good in this case, and the use of technologies.
Yeah. Exactly. As I was saying, in political science, is the whole norm of governmentality, right?
Which is a very, and I like that, a very left, anarchist approach. It could be very right wing, for other things.
Perfect. Last question just to clarify, again, on the role of government. You mentioned, in my own interpretation, the role of government is changing the norms, right?
Again, I’m thinking of going internationally. Who do you see as the main partners? Would it be governments? If you had to choose one, government or liberal unions, other organizations, NGOs? What the ideal partner for that?
Right. I have two last questions.
Right. I’m trying to see how and if it’s possible to do both.
What we’re striving with in terms of that is a little of this discussion in the meetings that we had before with ITRI and all this, whatever people is that it’s about reducing costs in order to being competitive internationally. Right?
Do you see this almost two different, I don’t know if that’s the proper term, worlds, the social and industrial, let’s say, as necessarily coexistent? Could it be only social, for example?
Then, on the flip side, the difficulties of being in government. I’m thinking, especially ministers like current development or science and technology, I’m not sure how strong lobbying is here. In North America, it’s really tough. When trying to implement some of these projects and trying to increase this kind ...
Oh really?
That’s hard.
How do you see the role of government, especially now with your role is from the inside?
That was the next thing I wanted to ask about, the role of government, especially knowing your beliefs before becoming a minister.
If there’s no connection with a major organization or foundation, how do you scale this up?
How can you scale up some of these, especially the local? You mentioned that some of them start from local communities.
Especially as a minister, how can you navigate in that?
Then going to non capitalistic models.
That’s something that we’re trying to unpack. It’s hard. As you know, there’s a wide spectrum of starting with, let’s say, social corporate responsibility, which is not really the same thing, right?
Nice.
We talked a lot about the social aspect of innovation, which is amazing. Could you elaborate a bit more on the technological? I’m also trying to see, maybe compare notes with what we have in Ontario or in Canada, which technologies you see that have more applications in these issues. ...
Blueseeds?
I think also this is an area where maybe there could be some collaboration. That would be great.
Then the other area we’re interested in is indigenous perspectives on all this. That’s something that we care about in Canada as well.
When is that?
I didn’t see that. Right. Perfect.
I worked briefly on that. I was in New York for a period, working on the SDGs there, and I know there’s a global discussion about this and a need for positive examples like this one. Do you see Taiwan playing a role through these projects?
Perfect. Two themes that I’m interested in, or main ones, because I have to choose what to ask you. It’s so interesting. One is, I’m thinking about international collaborations, especially since you work on SDGs.
That’s amazing.
Is that something you’ve already seen happening?
Can I ask again back the role of academia in this process?
...some significant investment or something.
What happens after that? Let’s say they change the regulation, but then they need...
They want this change for something else.
Actually, that’s a good point. In the next stage of that, let’s say they decide they co create regulation. I would assume, I’m thinking as a starting point in a town, when they have an idea, they have a longer plan, right?
Out of curiosity, what did the other ministries think when you first proposed that? I assume some were not very comfortable.
The percent of...
That would be great.
I’m trying to understand how it works practically. Let’s say there’s some town, especially isolated this is a problem that we have in Canada as well. They come up with some vision but then there is no talent to develop that.
Perfect. I’d like you also to expand a bit. You touched on the role of academia and the private sector, if you could expand a bit.
