Indian passport

• The Digital Product Passport (DPP), pioneered by the European Union, aims to simplify this task.
• Between 2026 and 2027, DPPs will be first implemented in the greatest environmental impact product group, batteries & vehicles.
• "The Digital Product Passport will be a game-changer promoting traceability, material and energy efficiency, and repair-based business models," says Rithika Thomas, Sustainable Technologies Industry Analyst at ABI Research.
• These findings are from ABI Research's Digital Product Passports: Tech-Driven Sustainability and Traceability for EV Batteries, Construction Materials and Pilot Use Cases .

• There will be many meaningful conversations about ways we can each engage with and support reconciliation.
• However, one issue that doesn’t get enough attention is how transportation continues to be a serious challenge for Indigenous communities.
• This is concerning as it undermines our pursuit of true equity for all and runs the risk of misallocating public funds.

The roots of transportation injustice

• Though each jurisdiction in Canada has its own settler-colonial origin story, the roots of transportation within this are inseparable.
• This was a dark period of extreme poverty and housing insecurity, the impacts of which continue to marginalize and harm Métis people today.
• Under this system, police were authorized to arrest and imprison Indigenous people who were found off-reserve without a pass.

Lack of investment

• They impact the ability for Indigenous communities to respond to emergencies and climate disasters, complicate the unity of Indigenous families and more.
• Some of these impacts may be more acute in rural, remote or isolated communities, but local governments lack an understanding of how urban Indigenous communities experience transportation and mobility.

Anti-Indigenous racism

• Indigenous communities experience systemic racism in policing, with disproportionate amounts of ticketing and overrepresentation in arrests, with rates as high as 10 times that of white people in some areas.
• Read more:
  How colonial racism fuels Saskatchewan's criminalization of Indigenous men

  The impacts of colonization are gendered, as evidenced by the disturbing rate of violence against Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, transgender and gender-diverse people.

• Land dispossession and a lack of adequate housing and transportation options also enable disproportionate rates of human trafficking of Indigenous women and girls.

Right to security

• Many of the factors underpinning these issues violate the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), including the right to a life free from discrimination; to life, physical and mental integrity, liberty and security of person; and the right to improve economic and social conditions.
• It’s time for planning professionals, municipalities and transport agencies to recognize that transportation is a reconciliation imperative too.
• There are things we can do to embed reconciliation in our work more meaningfully: Be diligent about the truth.
• Such actions are uncovering the ways municipal institutions and structures have dispossessed and violated Indigenous Peoples, and illuminating the path forward.

• As the world of luxury goods intersects with the digital realm, WISeKey's trusted NFT technology is ushering in a new era of authentication and representation.
• By leveraging the groundbreaking concept of NFTs luxury brands can now create a unique digital footprint for their products on the blockchain.
• Furthermore, the technology grants brands the prowess to issue, validate, and adjust digital certificates of authenticity, fortifying against counterfeiting.
• WISeKey, a global pioneer in combining dual-factor authentication with blockchain technology, ensures the security of luxury mechanical watches.

• Thales, the world’s leading supplier of ePassport solutions for more than 40 national programs worldwide, was recently awarded a new U.S. passport eCover contract with the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) for up to the next 10 years.
• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230510005013/en/
  Since 2005, Thales has delivered over 127 million eCovers and collaborated with GPO to provide secure technology and components for U.S. passport covers.
• Thales eCovers maximizes and integrates all the attributes required in an ePassport, highest security, durability and aesthetics.
• “As the global leader in digital security with the most extensive long-term experience for e-covers worldwide, Thales continually offers the most sophisticated solutions for safeguarding personal identities for travel documents.”