Automotive News Canada - May 2018 - 13

* MAY 2018

Autonomous policy caught
in a tech-change Catch-22
The roadmap needs
to be specific,
but it can't be when
the cars don't exist

spent months investigating
self-driving vehicles. They
visited research labs, circled
Parliament Hill in a self-driving bus and heard from nearly
80 witnesses from Canada and
the United States.
The 16 recommendations
emerging from their study aim
more at shaping government
policy than providing any stepby-step checklist for autonomous-vehicle readiness, necessarily so when even the timetable is unknown.
"Experts say self-driving
transportation could take root
in urban areas in as few as 10
to 15 years," is as specific as
the report gets.

steal information or use it for
ill purposes spurred several
recommendations. One calls
on Transport Canada to enlist
Public Safety Canada and the
Communications Security
Establishment in developing
"guidance" for the transportation industry on equipment
and software updates.
Another recommends establishing a government-industry "real-time crisis connect
network" that could be patterned on the Canadian Cyber
Incident Response Centre for
critical infrastructure.
Cars, like cellphones,
already collect information on
people's movements and habits. The data feed will only
increase.
"We're not resisting the fact
that that will happen," said
Sen. Dawson, "[but] we want
to be sure that it's done in the
most transparent manner and
with as much respect for confidentiality as possible."
One way to accomplish this
would be to give the federal
privacy commissioner powers to investigate and enforce
industry compliance with privacy laws.

POLICY IMPERATIVE

WIDER EFFECTS

But without concrete policy, it advises, Canada is ill-prepared for what Dawson's fellow Sen. Patricia Bovey called
"a great paradigm shift" to
self-driving and connected
vehicles.
On one side, the federal Innovation, Science and
Economic Development
Ministry presses to foster
Canadian contributions in the
ever-expanding AV field. On
the other, Transport Canada
strives to hold self-driving
cars to tough safety standards
developed over decades. One
witness suggested the federal
government is trying to move
forward "with one foot on the
gas pedal and one foot on the
brake pedal," the report said.
It calls for a "joint policy
unit" between the departments
to co-ordinate efforts and
implement a national strategy.
Vehicle design and safety are federal responsibilities,
but drivers and roads are regulated by the provinces and
territories. The report authors
say Transport Canada should
work with provincial governments through the Canadian
Council of Motor Transport
Administrators, with input
from cities as well, to develop
a model provincial policy for
automated and connected vehicles on public roads.
Transport Canada should
also step up cooperation with
U.S. regulators "to ensure that
these vehicles will work seamlessly" in both countries.

Hundreds of thousands
of jobs could be lost to automation in industries such as

By ROBERT BOSTELAAR
O T TAWA C O R R E S P O N D E N T

OTTAWA - A SENATE OF
Canada study suggests that
time remains to prepare for
the impact of autonomous
vehicles and to avert the
confusion and conflict that
surrounded the arrival of
ride-hailing services such as
Uber and Lyft.
For Sen. Dennis Dawson,
a key author of the Driving
Change report, the turmoil
those services caused for regulators and the taxi industry
should serve as a warning of
much greater disruption to
come.
"It was shocking how
unprepared we were."
Acting on a request from
Transport Minister Marc
Garneau, members of the
Senate's transport and communications committee

AUTONOMOUS
ROADMAP
Quotes from Driving
Change: Technology
and the Future of the
Automated Vehicle
* 'We are approaching the
end of an era for the traditional, individually owned,
human-driven automobile.'
* 'In the not-too-distant
future, people will be able
to summon a driverless
taxi from their smartphone
and may therefore decide
to forego vehicle ownership in favour of these
shared automated vehicles.'
* 'These technologies will
come with substantial benefits, not the least of which
is safety. With human
error now causing the vast
majority (about 94 per
cent) of traffic collisions,
there is no doubt that automated and connected
vehicles will save lives.'
* 'These technologies also
raise a number of concerns in terms of job losses, privacy, cybersecurity, urban sprawl and
infrastructure. In particular, these vehicles collect a vast amount of data
and could be the target of
hackers who want to use
the vehicles for nefarious
purposes.'

Federal ministers Mark
Garneau and Navdeep Bains
will create a plan within
a few months. ( P H O T O S : F I L E )

transportation, parking and
taxis, the study warns.
Governments will need
to strengthen retraining
and skills development for
Canadians caught in the shift.
As well, Transport Canada
should monitor the impact of
the new technologies on the
insurance industry, infrastructure and public transit.
Still, there will be a payoff in health and mobility,
the Canadian Automobile
Association (CAA) noted in
welcoming the findings.
"The report highlights
the two key long-term benefits of autonomous vehicles:
significantly fewer injuries
and deaths on the roads, and
increased personal mobility
for seniors and the disabled,"
the CAA said.
Even as Garneau and

Innovations Minister
Navdeep Bains promised a
plan "in coming months" that
will be guided by the report,
Dawson predicted that the
senate committee will need
to update its study in two
or three years. That's partly because of the rapid pace of
change. But it will also be necessary because of the secrecy
that permeates the efforts of
tech giants pushing into the
transportation field.
"There's not a lot of transparency with Alphabet and
Google and Facebook and
Microsoft. They're going to
be putting the vehicles on the
road and we'll have to react to
it," he said.
"I would hope by talking
about it now we're preparing
the government to understand
it's happening." - ANC

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CYBERSECURITY
Fears that hackers could
take control of a vehicle to

A Senate of Canada study's recommendations are aimed
more at shaping government policy than providing a
checklist for AV readiness. P H O T O : I S T O C K

SC 13120

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News Canada - May 2018