By Arundati Dandapani, Founder and CEO, Generation1.ca
On Tuesday, November 4, Generation1.ca convened our Fall 2025 cohort for an intimate yet high-impact Future Ready Governance summit—an afternoon of knowledge exchange, skills practice, and strategic upskilling across AI, EDIB, and public-sector data practices for professionals looking to work with or within government, one of the country’s largest investors in public-opinion research. The day brought together a remarkable cross-section of leaders from 11 am – 8 pm EST, shaping Canada’s public-sector and insights ecosystem, including PORD’s Salim Barghouth, Frank Graves of EKOS Research Associates, QuestionPro’s Jeff Lawrence, the Immigrant Employment Council of BC’s Rania Younes, CESOC’s France Elope among speakers—all envisioned in a day led by me as the Founder and CEO of Generation1.ca and the conference host/chair. Thank you to our speakers but also to ourInclusion Sponsor Fuse Insights and to our CareerPro Sponsor QuestionPro as well as to our returning association partners for this event including Esomar, Pan African Chamber of Commerce and Women Entrepreneurship Centre (WEC), all powered by our Future Ready Innovators program and credential.
We were also joined by representatives from various departments of government including Global Affairs Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, Employment and Social Development Canada, key public-affairs units, and faculty and students from Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, and Algonquin College—all contributing to a terrific range of interactions on public-sector data practices and the competencies needed to build immigrant-inclusive workplaces and societies.
What followed was a rich, interdisciplinary dialogue on tapping multiculturalism as expertise and strengthening Canada’s strategic advantage in an era of economic slowdown, unemployment and underemployment, declining citizen satisfaction, polarization, and disinformation-fuelled narratives about immigration. At the heart of these tensions lie two insights from Generation1.ca’s Global Industry Skills Study (GISS) that framed the day’s conversations: (1) Immigrants consistently call for better access to job supports and clearer pathways to career advancement along with more targeted supports to combat social isolation and discrimination at work, and (2) Employers overwhelmingly want more talent upskilled at the intersection of data, AI, strategy, and business—even as a small, vocal minority remains opposed to hiring global talent, framing immigrants as burdens rather than assets. These dual realities signal why Future Ready Governance is urgently needed—and why Canada and North America must invest in people, systems, and ethical infrastructures that will shape their next era of global competitiveness.
Following my opening address—where I shared Generation1.ca’s mission, values, purpose, and impact with empowering and advancing immigrant professionals’ successes, along with the objectives of the all-day summit—I stepped fully into my role as convener, bringing together fellow experts from across sectors to interrogate findings, challenge assumptions and co-create a shared understanding of what the future requires. My goal was to build the connective tissue between policy, industry, community, and lived experience—to ensure that every voice in the room contributed to a larger systems-level view of where Canada and North America must go next.
My reflections from the day’s sessions are captured here. But I have also included a highlights reel, the master deck of all the presentations, and a video of the summit’s key sessions excluding the networking portions of coffee bites, lunch and cocktails.
Movers and arrivers—first-generation or Generation1 immigrants, as we call them—face distinct challenges, especially those who arrive to North America or Canada later in their careers. In our public sector address keynote, our guest Salim Barghouth, Advisor / Analyst, Public Opinion Research Directorate, shared a resonant story of moving from Jordan and the Middle East to Canada, and then rising within the public sector through continuous education, upskilling, and a steadfast commitment to technical excellence and research best practices cultivated long before his move to Canada working across consumer insights across CPG brands.
His message was clear: do not give up; differentiate through your strengths in the way he served on various committees and coalitions on research excellence; and remaining grateful for the renewed sense of safety, stability, and possibility that a new country can offer. He outlined the various tools and processes used by the directorate in providing services to the rest of the government agencies for research, communications, advertising copy, and associated requirements as listed on their various webpages. Salim also acknowledged a reality many immigrants know well: stepping into leadership roles is difficult, and the barriers are real, not imagined, especially for those who are bilingual or multilingual, yet not fluent in one or both of Canada’s official languages, which remain essential for advancement within the federal government, especially in Ottawa.
The next session by Frank Graves, Founder and President of EKOS Research Associates, took us deep into the ethics of public-opinion research through his far-reaching presentation on what he called the epistemic crisis starting out with the problem of a decline of shared / inclusive prosperity. He outlined from his survey research studies how today’s economic and social turbulence is preceded—and amplified—by widening ideological divides, a pattern widely described in the literature as ordered populism, fuelled by disinformation. The data was stark: disinformation is now the strongest predictor of voter intention, attitudes toward immigration, support for secession (as seen in Quebec’s referendum history, Brexit, and Alberta, where 54% believe the province would be better off independent), support for populist movements, and levels of national attachment. A striking 96% of disinformed respondents believed Canada accepts “too many” immigrants.
Yet one finding surprised many: Canada’s most informed and most disinformed citizens share one trait—confidence. Even more revealing, both groups expressed a desire for scientific, representative models of citizen engagement. In essence, people become disinformed when they do not feel heard. As a former US presidential candidate noted in her recent post-election analysis and book, voters supported those who made them felt listened to, whether or not the promises were true. This model of active listening and consultation thus appears to hold promise according to the data.
Frank also highlighted deep contradictions around AI: despite high usage, pessimism about the technology is widespread—especially among youth. While there is near-universal support for AI-labelling requirements, dissatisfaction persists with both government oversight and industry self-regulation. He emphasized the critical need for rigorous survey design, alongside the value of probability-based panels and verified sampling frames—tools that reduce AI-generated fraud and strengthen the integrity of public-opinion research in an era of accelerating uncertainty.
Generation1.ca’s summit’s Inclusion Sponsors, Nick Drew , Founder and CEO of Fuse Insights, contributed a perspective on data quality, a timely catalyst in the ongoing debate between regulated and self-regulated industries, a discussion we also raised during our Privacy Day webinar earlier this year. This isn’t the first time this has surfaced, but it’s true that because the data, analytics, insights industry is largely self-regulated, it becomes too easy for people to exploit that freedom, whether through poor-quality data practices or unprofessional conduct masked by a “peer-governed” culture. Too often, perception outweighs reality, complicating accountability. It doesn’t necessarily move the debate forward, especially when every organization has competing and intersecting business and social interests, but it does raise the deeper question: what does meaningful regulation actually look like?
For federal bodies, the answer might converge; for private-sector actors, it may inevitably diverge even with some common guiding principles (eg. industry but especially organizational codes of ethics). The idea of harmonized good practices, paired with sector-specific codes of conduct—keeps emerging as we watch people wrestle with different approaches, guardrails, and solutions. And that’s precisely why forums like Generation1.ca’s Future Ready Governance exist: to elevate contributions that move us closer to inclusive prosperity and shared accountability.
Our event’s discussions around what to expect from the data ethics of vendors and providers of data services, technology and products for the public sector was met most with questions around transparency but also accessibility. While global data associations like Esomar offer valuable guidelines—especially on what to ask vendors providing AI-based research and insights services—the public sector still needs its own unified, commonly shared resources outlining which types of vendors are approved for use when adopting new AI, tech, data or related solutions. Such resources would reduce time, costs, risk, and unnecessary red tape. Increasingly the use of synthetic data to train AI models has been both controversial and a matter of debate in public and private spheres. These UN guidelines recognize the merits and uses of synthetic data in training AI models particularly in times of data-scarcity (missing health records, or records lost in natural disasters, etc.) which we first discussed during the release of our GISS 2023.
Generation1.ca’s Career Pro Sponsors QuestionPro went next and were well represented by Jeff Lawrence, their Country Manager, Canada. Their presentation of Can We Trust AI? examined how organizations can adopt AI responsibly without compromising data quality, privacy, or public trust. Jeff highlighted that AI is only as reliable as the data it learns from, revealing panel audits where up to 30% of responses—and in one case over 90%—were bot-generated, emphasizing the need for strong fraud detection.
Jeff also exposed a major but often overlooked risk: many firms anonymize client data and use it to train third-party language models, creating an “invisible data leak” that can unintentionally empower competitors. He contrasted this with QuestionPro’s privacy-first stance, including acquiring ISO 42001-aligned governance and a commitment to not using client data for external LLM training. Looking ahead, he noted the rising role of synthetic data for safer, more cost-efficient experimentation, while stressing that robust governance, transparency, and ethical guardrails are now essential. Finally, Jeff argued that AI becomes trustworthy only when we engineer its trustworthiness through data integrity, privacy protections, and accountable leadership.
With lunch, coffee, and networking woven throughout the day, we closed with a fireside panel spotlighting IECBC’s work through Rania Younes, Director of Strategy and Insights, who we met earlier at the FSC’s Future Built on Skills conference. A newcomer herself—like Salim—Rania had spent the past twenty-five years in Canada honing her analytical brilliance and her ability to move fluidly across “mental models” as she courted one professional success after another. In her current role, she draws from a vast wealth of expertise in helping shape more impactful immigration policy while strengthening the settlement sector’s capacity to support immigrants: those already here, and also those preparing to arrive through various upskilling initiatives. I am honoured as well to serve on their advisory committee of employers in reviewing course materials that ensure their curricula’s direct industry relevance.
Rania and I noted that the challenge of building immigrant-inclusive workplaces often comes down to resources, capacity building, and, critically, the willingness to help, listen, and be heard. In fact, most employers across North America according to GISS2025, don’t have EDIB supports in place for immigrants, however, their intent to hire them or support them with job-related skill development and mentorship is unambiguously high. However the journey from intent to action to satisfaction can be an arduous and revelatory one as lived stories reveal, and the two-way street of cultural adaptation is now increasingly being reshaped by AI and emerging technologies, demanding more dynamic learning on both sides. For Canada—and for its industries and institutions—to thrive in the future, this reciprocal learning must accelerate and deepen.
As we wrapped the day to a grand finale of prizes and cocktails, one message was clear: the future of governance, talent, and technology will be shaped by those willing to learn, adapt, and lead together—and Generation1.ca remains proud to stand at the fast-evolving center of that collective momentum, fuelled by immigrant ambition and a nation and continent that must continually redefine its place in the world by drawing from its rich pluralities, strategic alliances, underserved talent pools, consumers and citizens, and really its weakest links, in order to live up to its (and our) current and future potential as societies and industry.
Hightlights reel of memories
Access the PDF Masterdeck for the full day below followed by the video recordings of key sessions.
Questions about this or future opportunities with us? Email Arundati@generation1.ca.
