Before getting to the event details, it might be useful to give an overview of the situation regarding AI safety and transparency and the response from this British Columbia AI community to a federal government consultation that closes tomorrow, September 23, 2026, from the event page,
What BC told Ottawa. The AI transparency takeover.
If an AI system makes a decision about your life, you should be able to question it, reach someone responsible, and get a bad decision fixed. Pretty reasonable things to ask. Much harder to deliver than a little label saying AI was involved.
We’re bringing a piece of work this community made together: our response to Canada’s consultation on AI transparency. We’ll look at what people asked for, how those ideas became a submission, and what we should expect from the people receiving it.
Bring your questions. Bring your disagreements. Bring the example from your own life that keeps getting left out of these conversations.
Together we worked through Canada’s five AI transparency questions as part of the Canadian federal consultation that closes September 23.
For anyone who wants to read ahead:
- The full AI transparency response, with findings, responses to the five consultation areas, and the public source record.
- What Twenty People in a Studio Told the Federal Government About AI, the story of the people and work behind the submission.
- The AI Trust Gap Is Not an Education Problem, our earlier response to Canada’s AI strategy and the assumption that more familiarity automatically produces more trust.
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A September 21, 2026 notice (received via email) for Vancouver’s next AI community meetup promotes the upcoming September 2026 meeting listed on this event page, Note: There is likely some redundancy in the information included below,
You’re invited to
Vancouver AI Community Meetup: AI Safety & Transparency
Date:
Wednesday, September 30 [2026]
Time:
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Place:
H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
Vancouver, BC[Earlyworm tickets $50 CAD available until 11:30 PM PT September 21, 2026
$60 CAD standard tickets available until 12 am PT October 1, 2926]September [2026] Program
September 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Jonny Williams opens for us. He’s been part of this since the very first gatherings, his family too, and he starts us off in a good way every time. We’re glad the night falls when it does and that he’s the one who begins it. Wear orange.
This summer, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada [ISED] asked Canadians what greater AI transparency should look like. Its consultation covers five areas: identifying AI-generated content, knowing when you’re interacting with AI, understanding AI systems, tracking serious incidents, and keeping a record of what AI agents do on our behalf. The deadline is September 23 [2026], one week before we gather at the Space Centre. Read the federal consultation →
On August 4 [2026], about twenty of us sat down at Parker Street Studios to work through those questions together. Tanya Slingsby opened the studio. Peter Van Garderen facilitated. People brought experiences from their work and their lives, and the conversation kept getting into the difficult stuff underneath the survey: consent, responsibility, and who has the power to say no.
We didn’t finish every survey question. We did leave a public record of the conversation: the recording, transcript, and facilitator’s notes.
Sara Taherzadeh turned that material into the collective report. The Lab reviewed it in September, and BC + AI emailed the submission to ISED on September 11. We also documented where AI tools helped and where people made the decisions. A submission asking for transparency ought to show its own work. Read how it was made →
The demand running through it is practical. Tell people what a system is doing and what information it used. Give them someone to contact. Keep a record they can challenge. Make correction and repair possible. Disclosure should leave a person able to do something with what they’ve learned.
People also questioned whether taking part would change anything. BC + AI is asking ISED to publish which recommendations it accepts, defers, or rejects, with reasons. Giving your time to a public process should come with a way to see what happened next. Read the findings →
At Meetup #33, Peter Van Garderen will talk through how the August session worked. Sara Taherzadeh, a registered nurse turned governance architect, will walk us through the submission and what accountability could mean in practice. Then we’ll open the floor.
You don’t need a policy background or a stack of finished opinions. Come curious and willing to hear somebody else’s experience. The useful part of Vancouver AI has always been what happens when people who would otherwise never meet start thinking together.
The Lineup
Jonny Williams
Jonny opens Vancouver AI the way this room has learned to start: locate the night in place before anybody demos a model. Squamish Nation. Cultural consultation that turns fat impact assessments into something a Nation can actually use.
He’s put AI to work on that paper mountain, and he keeps asking the ugly ownership questions out loud: who holds a model trained on Squamish language, and what happens when fluent speakers are still a small circle.
Sep 30 is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
Sara Taherzadeh: Governance Architect & Enterprise OCM [organizational change management]
Sara is a registered nurse turned governance architect who has spent more than 25 years making healthcare technology work better for the people it’s meant to serve. She helped establish what became HealthLink BC 811 and has worked across British Columbia’s digital health systems — from frontline care to provincial technology infrastructure governance and change management.
Sara knows how institutions work, where they fall short of the people they serve, and why the hardest questions are usually the ones most worth asking together. She brings that human-centered, lived experience to AI governance, championing accountability, inclusive decision-making, and real authority for the people affected by the systems being built around and for them.
Peter Van Garderen: Archivist & AI Researcher
Peter spent decades on digital archives (Archivematica, AtoM), the unglamorous stack that keeps records findable and contestable. Then he pointed that same provenance brain at AI.
He ran the Ethical Futures Lab room that answered Ottawa’s transparency questions as one group, posted the recording and notes the next day, and will not treat “AI-assisted” as a free pass on receipts.
Kris Krüg: Executive Director, BC + AI Ecosystem
Straight back from Montréal. ALL IN week. Centres of excellence by day. Ministers and the techno-power-broker set by night. And the citizen resistance that shows up when “innovation” forgets who pays the bill. Kris isn’t here to recite talking points.
He’s here to report what those rooms actually sound like when you hold critique in one hand and curiosity in the other. What that means for Vancouver on a night about transparency, trust, and receipts.
Demos from Metacreation Lab for Creative AI
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Get ready to bring your thoughts to the meetup.