Speakers

Opening Remarks

Jim Balsillie - Former Chief Executive Officer of BlackBerry and Founder of the BSIA and CIGI

Mr. Balsillie 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. His private investment office includes global and domestic technology investments.

He is the co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking in New York, and founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators based in Toronto, the Digital Governance Council in Ottawa, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, as well as 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 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.

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Michel Miraillet - French Ambassador in Canada

A career diplomat, Michel Miraillet was named French Ambassador to Ottawa by decree of the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron dated September13, 2022. He took up his functions on September 22, 2022.

Born in 1960, Michel Miraillet was the Director general for Global affairs of the French ministry of Foreign Affairs and the G7/G20 sous-sherpa from March 2020 to September 2022. He was previously from September 2017 the French Ambassador to Brazil and to the United Arab Emirates from 2013 to 2017, after six years spent from August 2007 to August 2013 as the Director for strategic affairs and the defence policy director of the French Ministry of Defense.

Before joining the Ministry of Defense, served as the Director for International and Strategic Affairs of the Secretariat General for National Defense, an agency attached to the Prime minister’s office conducting the coordination of governmental action on issues concerning France’s internal and external security.

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Ann Fitz-Gerald - Director - Balsillie School of International Affairs

Ann Fitz-Gerald is director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs and a professor in Wilfrid Laurier University’s Department of Political Science. She also co-leads one of eight working groups in CIGI’s project Reimagining a Canadian National Security Strategy.

She has worked at both the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College London, and at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Cranfield University, where she was the director, defence and security leadership. During her time at Cranfield, Ann led the UK-government-funded Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform and Cranfield’s Centre for Defence Management and Leadership. She is a senior security and justice adviser to the UK government and a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London, England.

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Estelle Azemard - Vice President Americas - OVHcloud

Since 2020, Estelle Azemard has served as Vice President Americas at OVHcloud, a global leader in cloud computing. She began her career as a lawyer in France before moving to Quebec in 2005. After completing an MBA at HEC Montréal, she transitioned into the technology sector, gaining extensive experience in management and marketing for IT infrastructure companies.

In her current role, she leads OVHcloud's commercial operations in Canada, shaping the company's strategic vision across Canada and Latin America. Under her leadership, OVHcloud marked a significant milestone in March 2024 with the opening of a new data centre in the Toronto region.

Appointed as a French Foreign Trade Advisor in 2022 and a board member of French Tech Toronto in 2023, Estelle is also recognized for her commitment to equal opportunity and diversity in the technology sector.

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Michel Paulin - CEO - OVHcloud

Michel Paulin has spent most of his career in the IT, telecom and internet sectors. He was Chief Executive Officer of Neuf Cegetel, for which he made the initial public offering, Méditel (now Orange Morocco) and SFR. His appointment is part of a new phase in the development of OVHcloud. Michel oversees the implementation of the Smart Cloud strategic plan, aimed at consolidating OVHcloud's position as an alternative leader in the cloud sector.Michel Paulin is a member of the Strategic and ESG Committee.

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Aaron Shull - Managing Director and General Counsel - CIGI

Aaron Shull is the managing director and general counsel at CIGI. He is a senior legal executive and is recognized as a leading expert on complex issues at the intersection of public policy, emerging technology, cybersecurity, privacy and data protection.

Aaron has extensive experience building global networks of experts to enhance engagement with researchers and practitioners drawn from government, academia, industry and civil society.

He recently concluded a significant research effort that focused on Reimagining a Canadian National Security Strategy. This project was unprecedented in scale and scope in Canada. It engaged a multidisciplinary network of more than 250 experts to inspire updated and innovative national security and intelligence practices and offered a series of key policy recommendations to assist the Government of Canada in addressing the challenges of a new security environment.

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Speakers

Panelists

Vass Bednar - Executive director of the Master of Public Policy in Digital Society program - McMaster University

Vass Bednar is a CIGI senior fellow working at the intersection of technology and public policy as the executive director of the Master of Public Policy in Digital Society program at McMaster University, where she is an adjunct professor of political science. She writes a newsletter about start-ups and public policy called “regs to riches” and is a Public Policy Forum fellow.

Vass is recognized as a creative, data-driven thinker and recently advised Ontario’s minister of labour, training and skills development on the province’s Workforce Recovery Advisory Committee (2021). She was previously chair of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Expert Panel on Youth Employment (2016–2017). As an interdisciplinary wonk focused on ensuring that we have the regulatory structures we need to embrace the future of work and new ways of living, Vass has further strengthened her collaborative approach to policy making as an Action Canada fellow (2012–2013) and as a Civic Action DiverseCity fellow (2015–2016).

As an enthusiastic and perpetual student of the policy-making process, she has held leadership roles at Delphia, Airbnb, Queen’s Park, the City of Toronto and the University of Toronto.

Passionate about public dialogue, she was also the co-host of Detangled, a weekly pop culture and public policy radio show and podcast that ran from 2016 to 2018. Vass currently contributes to public dialogue as a panellist on CBC’s The Sunday Magazine show and on Newstalk 1010’s “Free for All” panel on Thursday mornings.

She is a graduate of McMaster University’s Arts & Science Program (2008) and holds a master of public policy from the University of Toronto (2010).

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Matt Malone - Balsillie Scholar and Incoming Director at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law

Matt Malone’s main research interest pertains to the various ways law
protects secret information, especially in the context of trade
secrecy, confidential information, access to information, privacy, data
protection, and cybersecurity. He also maintains a broad interest in
legal issues pertinent to modern workplaces, in particular workplace
investigations. He is called to thebar in British Columbia, California,
and New York.

Matt is a graduate of the University of Toronto (hBA), Hebrew University of Jerusalem (MA), and McGill University (LLB, BCL). After law school, Matt practiced law full-time in California at Morrison & Foerster and Van Dermyden Makus. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Law. He is currently an academic partner at the Investigative Journalism Foundation and an advisory board member of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

One of his research projects focuses on government transparency frameworks and examines the challenges ahead for AI and freedom of information / access to information.

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Adam Radwanski - Columnist and feature writer - The Globe and Mail

Adam Radwanski is a columnist and feature writer for The Globe and Mail's Report on Business, focusing on the transition to a low-carbon economy.

His recent work has included in-depth reporting and analysis of Canada's efforts to compete internationally for low-carbon investment, the development of the electric-vehicle and battery industries, the modernization of the electricity sector, the decarbonization of traditional industries and infrastructure, and some of the country's biggest public-policy debates around issues such as carbon pricing and oil-and-gas regulation.

A National Newspaper Award winner, he was also a co-recipient of the Canadian Journalism Foundation's award for climate solutions reporting, and was a 2023 finalist for the SABEW Canada Best in Business award for opinion writing.

Prior to beginning his current beat in November 2019, he specialized in profiles of public figures and backroom players, in-depth examinations of political phenomena, and leading coverage of election campaigns in Canada and the United States.

Adam previously served as The Globe and Mail's Ontario columnist, and before that was a member of the Globe's editorial board.

He made his start in journalism as the founder of Canada's first online political magazine, was a columnist and editor at the National Post, and was managing editor for online services at Maclean's. He has also written extensively on music, pop culture and sports.

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Benjamin Revcolevschi - Deputy CEO - OVHcloud

Benjamin heads up all operations both in France and internationally, with a particular focus on innovation, sustainability and the development of new products within current and future datacenters.

A graduate of École Polytechnique, Télécom-Paris and Université
Paris-Dauphine, Benjamin has spent most of his career in the
telecommunications and IT sectors, with Neuf Cegetel/SFR, Fujitsu and
DXC Technology.

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