Vancouver / civic policy lab / monthly
Not a panel. A working room for people who want AI's possibilities without surrendering agency, accountability, or public voice.
Both hands full
We can be excited about what AI makes possible and serious about who has power, who carries risk, and who gets a say.
August 4 / The federal transparency consultation
In August, about twenty people worked through the Government of Canada’s five AI transparency questions as one facilitated room. Peter Van Garderen ran it and published the recording, transcript, and notes. Sara Taherzadeh turned the night into the written submission. On September 1 the seventh room heard it read back and approved it. Read it, then add your own voice before the consultation closes.
2 days left to respondThe consultation closes September 23, 2026. Anyone in Canada can respond.
September → December / 2026
The autumn run is on the calendar. Each session is a small, laptops-open working room in Vancouver: practical ethics, public-interest AI, and enough disagreement to make the work useful.
A practical ethics session for the back-to-school, back-to-work return: the ways AI is already showing up in the room.
Public-interest AI through the lens of governance, rights, and civic imagination.
Separate real risk from noise, then turn concern into practical next steps with laptops open.
A year-end gathering around the questions that keep returning: agency, accountability, creativity, and labour.
The live federal question
A label is not accountability. The test is whether people can understand what is happening and then choose, refuse, contest, correct, reverse, or seek redress.
Open the Government of Canada consultationFrom disclosure to agency
These are field-test prototypes, not finished policy. The room's job is to find the missing questions and the points where a neat template falls apart.
Tell me I am dealing with AI before the interaction becomes consequential, then let me inspect the details.
Make scope, limits, data use, ownership, and paths to recourse legible in one place.
Record what acted, what it was allowed to do, what changed, and how a person can reverse or contest it.
March 4 / The People's AI Consultation
Jesi Carson designed and facilitated AEFL #1, then turned the small-group worksheets into a nine-page public report. It keeps economic justice beside creativity, job loss beside purpose, sovereignty beside the bigger boat.
The field note tells the story of the night. Jesi's report shows the actual work: the human-synthesized themes, the handwritten questions, and the ideas that did not collapse into one answer.
The room at work. Page 2 of the public report.
The human-synthesized themes. Page 3 of the public report.
Workshop, process design, facilitation, and report by Jesi Carson Creative.
The room has a memory
In March, the Lab worked through the People's AI Consultation. In May, people started mapping where civil society should show up. By July, the room was moving between power, access, disability, local infrastructure, labour, and public trust.
The format changes when the work demands it. The through-line is a real room, useful disagreement, and something people can carry forward.
How to plug in
What leaves the room
The Lab can carry public-safe notes into BC + AI's response to public consultations. Taking part does not mean you endorse a final submission. We do not attribute comments or quotes without consent.
Open the Lab's working hubAbout BC + AI
BC + AI is the member-supported nonprofit association growing out of Vancouver AI. Membership supports the rooms, working groups, follow-through, and people connecting practical AI work across British Columbia.
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