Balsillie Papers

Sean T. Sithole
Over the last few decades, the evolution of financial technologies (fintech) has introduced new innovative digital and mobile app platforms and services that have transformed cross-border remittance flows. This paper posits that fintech and digital remittances can serve as mechanisms to enhance individuals’ ability to access, understand and effectively use financial services despite regulatory and structural constraints.

Brendon J. Cannon
Undersea communication cables have historically operated within an interconnected global system characterized by cooperative redundancy and routing agreements. This paper argues that emerging bifurcation threatens to weaken resilience by reducing redundancy, narrowing routing options and increasing incentives for disruption.

Barry Rabe
This paper examines the current understudied international climate policy regime, considering its key design features and future viability amid recent US policy shifts hostile to many global and domestic climate mitigation efforts.

Renee Black, Edward Wu, Femi Gbolahan, YeJin Kang and Sadaf Qureshi
This paper demonstrates the need for a comprehensive research agenda to better understand the evolving policy influence environment, and create policy options to strengthen oversight, restore public trust and advance balanced digital and AI policy.

Susan Ariel Aaronson and Michael Moreno
Developers struggle to incorporate responsible AI into their practice and products, for several reasons. In this paper, we examine whether four major AI developers — OpenAI, Google, xAI and DeepSeek — act responsibly when developing and deploying chatbots. We focus on a key element of AI responsibility: user rights and welfare.

Marika Jeziorek and Natasha Tusikov
Digital contraceptive and fertility-tracking apps are increasingly central to how reproductive autonomy is imagined, marketed and managed. This paper interrogates how digital contraceptive apps govern reproduction through mechanisms of responsibilization, commodification and consent.

Dan Ciuriak
Antitrust is again in vogue; its long winter has ended. The revival of demand for antitrust is coincident with the advent of a new Gilded Age — this time in the context of an economy built on intangible assets — IP and (later, increasingly) data.

James W. Hinton and Fabrice Blais-Savoie
This paper will attempt to show a portrait of the world’s AI patent landscape and explain what happened to Canada’s apparent lead in the field, identify current trends in cross-border AI patenting ownership flows, then evaluate the adequacy of current Canadian policy and chart a path forward.

Jatin Nathwani and Artie Ng
This paper identifies options of industrial development that are transformative and stand as unique contributors with high-potential for fostering sustainable economic growth, reduced carbon emissions, and stable levels of employment opportunities.

Valdrin Dragusha and Andrea M. Brown
This paper reviews the potential of emerging technologies, in particular artificial intelligence (AI) and satellite crop mapping, for increasing agricultural production and addressing food insecurity in Africa.