Imagine you’re on a path through the woods and you notice some mushrooms beside a tree. You aren’t sure if they’re edible or not so you try to identify them using a book, an app, or a friend who knows more than you. But the mushroom you see is only the fruiting body of a complex underground network.

“Mushrooms are sometimes compared to icebergs,” writes Tim Lewis for The Guardian, “because most of the activity is actually taking place under the surface, out of sight. Here, networks of ‘mycelium’ — the vegetative part of the fungus — twist through the soil and make connections between plants. More than 90 per cent of plants depend on mycorrhizal fungi for improving their water and nutrient absorption, which has led to these networks being called the Wood Wide Web.”

The “Wood Wide Web” comparison helped people understand the interconnectedness of mycelium when the internet was just being popularized, and the similarities between nature and technology have continued to reflect each other. Technology, like mycelium networks, increasingly touch so many parts of our lives in ways both visible and invisible. This is especially true of public services.

In Ontario, this network is technology-fuelled surveillance that touches everything from traffic cameras to defense contracts. The creeping scope of surveillance is not something we have to worry about happening — it is already embedded.

The visible debate: Doug Ford’s camera switcheroo

Last year Doug Ford killed the cameras you could see, speed enforcement cameras, citing them as a ‘cash grab’ despite overwhelming public support. In February 2025, he attempted to position himself as an anti-surveillance champion, citing privacy concerns about Chinese electric vehicles. “Anyone who doesn’t believe Chinese EVs would ‘spy’ on Ontarians is naive,” Ford declared. But behind the scenes Ontario quietly continued integrating surveillance infrastructure you can’t see — the kind that operates in server farms, evidence management platforms, and defense contracts.

While Ford weaponizes anti-China sentiment and stokes fear for political capital, he’s taking meetings with the lobbyists looking to do the very same thing. 

Consider the trajectory of traffic cameras in Ontario. Between 2020 and 2024, Toronto deployed 150 automated speed enforcement cameras. The program generated $85 million in fines and achieved a 45 per cent reduction in speeding near schools, according to a SickKids Hospital study. Public support stood at 73 per cent, per CAA polling. Ford killed them anyway, calling them a “cash grab.”

This move opened up a market for AI enhanced traffic software companies like Miovision and Jenoptik to sell municipal governments traffic solutions. Brampton has already started rolling out their ‘advanced traffic management system,’ which includes testing new adaptive AI tools. Effectively this chain of events has normalized positioning automated surveillance as a “safety tool,” AI-powered recognition systems scanning license plates, private companies (like Germany’s Jenoptik) managing public enforcement, and revenue generation from automated behaviour monitoring.

The misdirection was perfect. While public officials debated $120 speeding tickets, Ford was opening the door to government subsidized private surveillance. All while bypassing meaningful public consultation and legislative review–all in the public eye. 

In the background less visible infrastructure has already been forming. Since 2021, Axon Public Safety Canada Inc. has earned more than $40M working within our justice system. 

The network beneath our feet

Analyzing recent lobbying activity, contracts, and open tenders reveals an acceleration in surveillance-as-service lobbying from companies spanning healthcare to border defense. Like mycelium spreading underground, this network has several growth stages. 

In 2021, Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General deployed Axon Evidence — a cloud-based digital evidence management platform — to the Ontario Provincial Police and multiple municipal police services. The announcement called it “groundbreaking modernization” that would connect all justice sector partners: police, courts, Crown attorneys, defense counsel, and corrections.

The evidence platform allows agencies to “store, manage, transfer and share digital evidence across all public safety agencies.” Ontario became the first province in Canada to connect all justice sector partners via cloud-based software-as-a-service.

What began as a tool for police accountability became the infrastructure mediating how justice operates in Ontario. Defense lawyers can’t access evidence without Axon’s platform. Prosecutors can’t prepare cases. Courts can’t process submissions. The justice system now requires this private company’s infrastructure to function.

By 2024 it spread outside of Ontario to the rest of the country, with the RCMP expanding Axon’s footprint to federal policing. Axon’s Canadian lobbying registrations show active engagement on “AI innovation” and “tariff policy” — positioning for the next stage: predictive policing and threat assessment.

Companies like Accipiter Radar bill themselves as “a leading provider of high performance radar surveillance solutions” with patented technologies such as Radar Intelligence Network and Surveillance-to-Intelligence. The company has headquarters in the U.S. and in Canada, with the technology belonging to the company — not to the country or state which uses it. 

Volatus Aerospace holds standing offers for “security and emergency response” while positioning in NATO training systems and autonomous operations. Volatus describes themselves as “innovators of aerial intelligence solutions,” also known as drones, “which uses existing technologies to optimize their offering of Surveillance as a Service.” 

NPS National, led by former Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier, lobbies on both border security and emergency response. Each company frames its technology as protecting citizens from threats, while overlooking our human rights. 

Kongsberg — a Norwegian defense conglomerate with an Ottawa-based subsidiary — supplies naval systems, air traffic control, arctic surveillance, space partnerships, and weapons systems is already a ‘trusted partner’ of the Canadian Armed Forces. Kongsberg has also partnered with NAV Canada on building the new Kingston Digital Facility which monitors air space. They’re actively lobbying the Office of the Premier, Office of the Solicitor General of Ontario and several other Ministries and Departments in the Ontario government.

Roshel, a Brampton based defense vehicle manufacturer, currently being criticized for supplying armoured vehicles to ICE, is not immediately integrated with surveillance. But Doug Ford’s initial support (“I think it’s fantastic!”) and minor walk back to “we can’t control where private companies sell products,” underscores just how vulnerable private surveillance embedded through public infrastructure has made us.  

And these are just some of the companies currently lobbying the Ontario government. 

The traffic camera scenario sets up a normalization narrative for the increasingly invasive technologies on offer: ‘We already use automated surveillance for traffic safety — why not borders? We already use AI for evidence management — why not threat detection? We already integrated the justice system on one platform — why not military operations?’

These decisions are being made not only without public consultation, but are being deployed in ways that make meaningful consent impossible. Private companies are protected by proprietary knowledge clauses and create a distance between government, the surveillance, and the people. Volatus prides itself on making use of existing technologies to enhance its drone services, this can include thermal imaging or integration with traffic surveillance or a myriad of other ‘innovations’. 

With speed enforcement cameras the understanding of what was being captured (license plates) when it was being captured (triggered only when speeding) and why it was being captured (to enforce speed limits) was clear and likely not subject to misuse. Now we are opening up to private companies using AI to monitor traffic, and that technology may be accessed by other forms of technology, such as drones, collecting information completely unrelated to safety.

Surveillance infrastructure now touches not just traffic, justice, and border data. Consider the progression:

Traffic cameras: Automated monitoring for “safety”
Justice evidence: Private infrastructure for “accountability”
Border/military: Defense integration for “sovereignty” 

What’s normalized: surveillance not as government watching citizens, but as corporate platforms mediating government functions. 

Depending on your point of view, the horizon can look bleak (if you value privacy rights), or full of opportunities (if you value shareholder value). Axon is already embedded in our justice system, and has healthcare and retail services on offer. MRF Geosystems is lobbying Ontario to ‘establish a provincial safety monitoring program for provincial employees’ after its success in Alberta. 

So, how do we draw a line?

Mapping the invisible

The end state is visible in this research: private companies having access to our information with the government’s blessing, reporting to shareholder interest, not public interest. 

The tell: Doug Ford killed traffic cameras (visible, resistable). Doug Ford can’t touch Axon’s justice platform (invisible, essential). Eventually this surveillance will not only be normalized, but our public infrastructure will depend on it. 

How do we protect our networks? I keep coming back to the mycelium network. The Society For The Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) is a scientific research organization founded to map mycorrhizal fungal communities and advocate for their protection. They produced an Underground Atlas of these networks that anyone can view to learn more about mycorrhizal hotspots, biodiversity, and how to protect these networks.

Just as scientists map mycelium networks to make them visible — shining light on something that thrives in darkness — we can do the same with networked surveillance. Alongside them we can map the community services and alternate methods we rely on to keep each other safe, thriving, and healthy. Imagine a map of your neighbourhood that identifies all of the touch points you are vulnerable to state surveillance and community networks you can be part of. 

The first step in understanding an ecosystem is making the invisible connections visible. The mushrooms we see on the forest floor are only the fruiting bodies. The network beneath determines what can grow.