Media Inquiries

Amid a trade war, Doug Ford’s dramatic gestures toward Crown Royal highlight how political theatre, economic pressure, and misconceptions about “Canadian” products collide. Emily Osborne unpacks how iconic Canadian whisky brands are often foreign-owned, complicating what “buy Canadian” really means in practice.

Vass Bednar, Managing Director of SHIELD, authors this article on the affordability crisis.

Kaylie Tiessen, Chief Economist, is included in this article on the growing job disparities in Canada. “You could be forgiven for thinking, with the top-line numbers, that it was kind of a ‘blah’ year for workers across Canada,” said Tiessen. 

The Walrus re-releases our previous newsletter written by Vass Bednar.

Kaylie Tiessen, Chief Economist at SHIELD, authored this article on the impact of trade agreements on Canadian digital sovereignty.

Vass Bednar, Managing Director of SHIELD, authors this piece for The Globe and Mail on shops removing price tags creating an algorithmic marketplace without the algorithms.

Matthew da Mota and Emily Osborne, SHIELD researchers, co-author this piece on The United States National Security Strategy and how it will impact Canadian sovereignty. 

Various SHIELD charts are used in this article to showcase the relationship between federal public service growth and Canadian population growth. 

Vass Bednar, Managing Director of SHIELD, is quoted in this story on former head of Canada’s most prominent federal consumer advocacy group resigning because of fire financial straits.

Vass Bednar, Managing Director of SHIELD, joins BetaKit to speak on Budget 2025, tech policy, and financial commitments

What did the 2025 budget deliver for generation Z and millennial Canadians? Vass Bednar, Managing Director of SHIELD, is quoted in this article on open banking. 

Vass Bednar, Managing Director at SHIELD, joins BNN Bloomberg to assess Blue Jay's resale ticket prices.

Emily Osborne authored this op-ed on Canada’s sovereign cloud, arguing that true digital sovereignty requires more than localized data. It demands Canadian ownership, control, and capacity over the country’s digital infrastructure. She highlights the importance of reducing dependence on U.S. tech giants to protect national security, strengthen economic resilience, and ensure Canada’s digital future reflects its own values and interests.

The Canadian SHIELD Institute was cited for our commitments to domestic ownership of all critical artificial intelligence intellectual property. In addition to federal initiative aimed at preserving and promoting Canadian-made intellectual property in the cleantech sector to be broadened to defence innovation.

The Canadian SHIELD Institute was cited for our commitments to domestic ownership of all critical artificial intelligence intellectual property. In addition to federal initiative aimed at preserving and promoting Canadian-made intellectual property in the cleantech sector to be broadened to defence innovation.

“Trump has declared a trade war,” Bednar said. “How are we going to calibrate, and also communicate to Canadians that there’s going to be economic pain ahead?”

Vass Bednar, Managing Director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute, is cited in this article discussing the security risks of foreign control over Canadian cloud services. She warns that a U.S. tech firm could be coerced into shutting down cloud services in Canada, creating a disruption “like the Rogers outage, but way worse.” Her perspective frames sovereignty as not only a privacy issue but also one of national security and resilience.

Public policy The Canadian Shield Institute’s newsletter, The National Interest, was cited in recent media coverage of the U.S. TikTok deal. Our Managing Director, Vass Bednar, noted that while the U.S. arrangement strengthens American sovereignty over the app, it leaves Canadian users without clear protections and subject to regulation from abroad. She emphasized the need for a “made-in-Canada mitigation framework” to ensure Canadian rules on security, governance, and market structure are not outsourced to either Beijing or Washington. 

Public policy expert concerned Visa and Mastercard are monopolizing transactions

Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute warns the federal government should be ready for pushback from financial service corporations as Ottawa attempts to reclaim digital sovereignty in an effort to reduce reliance on U.S. infrastructure.

“Buy now, pay later” (BNPL) programs, popular among younger generations, allow consumers to make purchases immediately and pay later in installments. While BNPL offers convenience and avoids credit card debt, it can lead to invisible debt accumulation and financial fragility. As Vass Bednar, Managing Director of SHIELD, writes in The Walrus, Regulators are grappling with how to oversee BNPL, which operates in a regulatory grey zone between credit cards and traditional loans.

What looks like reform is really just a long-avoided chore, writes SHIELD Managing Director Vass Bednar in The Walrus. 

If Robinhood's proposed acquisition of WonderFi is approved, the U.S. fintech company would gain control of Bitbuy and Coinsquare as well as more than $2.1-billion in assets under custody, writes SHIELD Managing Director Vass Bednar in The Globe and Mail. 

Big Tech companies, despite their immense influence, are largely unregulated, evading product liability laws that hold manufacturers accountable for defective products, writes SHIELD Managing Director Vass Bednar in The Globe and Mail. This legal exceptionalism allows them to sidestep responsibility for the harms caused by their AI tools, such as recommender systems and LLMs, which can lead to eating disorders, harassment, financial scams, and other negative consequences. Europe is moving forward with updated product liability rules that explicitly include software and AI systems, and Canada should do the same.

In 2004 Facebook was created. Two years later in 2006 Twitter was founded AND the very first episode of the Agenda aired on TVO. Fast forward to 2011 and social media was seen as helping sow the seeds of democracy in the Middle East during the Arab Spring. And many were optimistic that these growing connections would help harness the wisdom of the crowd. Today we look at how has social media evolved? How has social media changed us? And has it been a net negative or net positive? SHIELD Managing Director Vass Bednar joins Cory Doctorow, Jeff Jarvis, and Douglas Rushkoff to discuss.