ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER INDUSTRY NEWS 31 prediction capacity is worrying, Macklin identifies another threat— data access—as another particularly concerning move. The issue relates to Canada’s “data sovereignty” and data infrastructure, specifically how much digital scientific information is held domestically. Canada, says Macklin, holds a “reasonable” level of data infrastructure. But like many countries around the world, Canadian researchers also rely on data sets and analysis software created by and held in other countries, the U.S. being a critical source of scientific data across government, academia, and industry. The idea for such data sharing is to not “build silos” between countries, research fields, and such like, but to share scientific information for “the good of everybody” regardless of where they live. “Everybody being fairly generous, that’s made us a happier world,” says Macklin. Now, however, many Canadian researchers are concerned that the U.S. government will block access to critical data sources. Rumblings of such actions have already been heard regarding weather and geospatial information. There is also concern about future access to the National Center of Biotechnology Information, which Macklin says houses “a huge repository” of genomic information and analysis tools across all of science. “This is relied on by everybody, everywhere,” he says. The good news is that copies of the repository are held in Europe and Japan. The bad news is that the tools and services offered through the National Center for Biotechnology are unique to the United States. “You’d have to change a lot of the way you do your work in order to use the resource from those other places. That’s not insignificant…It touches federal science, academic science, industrial science. It’s kind of been a nice thing for us to get together and talk.” The threat of data loss, or loss of access, has spurred more conversations about data onshoring in Canada. The question, Macklin says, is determining “what do we need to have a copy of and keep inside for sure, versus trusting our friend out there?” While keeping more vital digital information within Canadian borders is possible, he adds, constructing the infrastructure required to do so—data centres, and the capacity to power them—would require significant investment. “You can’t build those overnight. The power it takes to generate and run those things brings concerns both financial and environmental,” Macklin says. “The world has changed, and now, unfortunately, the ‘I trust my brother’ is starting to fall apart a bit, which means more investment on our side, probably.” •
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