What would Canada look like if tech journalist and author Cory Doctorow were AI minister? For starters, there would likely be less sloganeering and more cursing coming out of Canada’s innovation ministry. It might also look, however, like a Canada that’s more skeptical of big, southern tech firms, more comfortable outside the confines of US copyright law, and less AI-pilled than the government is today.

Doctorow, who published his most recent nonfiction work, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, earlier this summer, joined BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys in the podcast studio last month, where he talked about repealing Canada’s anti-circumvention law Bill C-11, why jailbreaking big tech is a path to sovereignty, and how he fears the government’s “all-in” approach to AI could turbocharge 21st century fascism.