TfD Weekly - 17th June 2026
Civic Tech Toronto explores child-friendly urban design. Also this week: Canada's surveillance pricing rules won't arrive until 2028, and make sure you're subscribed to directly receive our Waymo open letter.
Welcome to TfD Weekly
Welcome all, especially our new subscribers!
TfD Weekly is the newsletter of Technologists for Democracy (TfD), a Toronto-based civic tech organisation working at the intersection of technology, privacy, and democratic accountability. Each week we recap what's happening at Civic Tech Toronto, share updates on our campaigns, and keep an eye on legislation that affects Canadians' digital rights.
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This Week at Civic Tech Toronto
This week, Civic Tech Toronto hosted Dr. Emily Gemmell, calling in from Vancouver, BC. Dr. Gemmell is a post-doctoral environmental health researcher at the University of British Columbia whose work focuses on how urban environments impact health across the lifespan. Her talk, "The Playability Gap: Measuring the Child-Friendliness of Urban Neighbourhoods," presented the development of an urban playability index for young children, examining how neighbourhood-level scores vary across Canada's 35 largest cities and what this means for children's health and development.
Civic Tech Toronto meets every Tuesday. Subscribe for future events
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Waymo in Canada
We are applying the finishing touches to our Waymo letter. The last few weeks have been spent taking in feedback from advocacy groups, policy experts and concerned citizens and are looking forward to sharing it with you.
If you're subscribed to our newsletter, you'll find it in your inbox the moment it's ready to publish. This letter would be essential reading for anyone you know who works in ride-sharing like Uber or Lyft, so please share this with anyone who depends on these services for their livelihoods.
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Surveillance Pricing
Surveillance pricing is when companies use your personal data, behaviour, location, or inferred characteristics to charge you a different price than the person next to you for the exact same product. It's already happening in grocery delivery, ride-sharing, and online shopping.
This week, AI Minister Evan Solomon tabled the federal government's latest privacy bill, its third attempt to update decades-old private sector privacy laws. Rules on surveillance pricing are unlikely to be in place before 2028, as the government says it will take 18 months just to set up the new regulatory body. The NDP is pushing for an immediate ban.
Read more: Canada's new surveillance pricing rules not likely to take effect before 2028 (CTV News)
Consenting to surveillance pricing is baked into the terms and conditions we click "agree" on without a second thought. But seeing what it looks like in practice should make us all rethink the type of data we willingly hand over. This video from More Perfect Union illustrates what surveillance pricing actually does to consumers, and how lobbyists work behind the scenes to shape the legislation meant to protect us. It's a US-focused video, but many of the same patterns are playing out here in Canada.
Watch: We Found a Radical Solution to Dynamic Pricing (More Perfect Union)
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Until next time,
The TfD Team