Mark Warner was featured on the CBC Weekend Business Panel talking about grocery prices, inflation and interest rates, and the launch of a paid subscription version of the ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot in the U.S. and a free tool to distinguish between text written by a human and text written by AI programs. (February 4, 2023) Mr. Warner is a Canadian and U.S. lawyer who has practiced in Toronto, Washington, D.C., New York and Brussels and has advised governments on trade policy and trade negotiations and previously worked on trade and competition issues as counsel in the OECD Trade Directorate in Paris. As a former Acting Legal Director for the Ontario Ministry of Consumer Services, Mark was responsible for prosecutions under the provincial consumer protection laws and regulations (including for door to door water cooler salespeople and the introduction of the Province’s pay day lending laws).
Mark is a former Legal Director of the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade and negotiated and drafted grant and loan agreements to leading global companies for jobs, investment, research and manufacturing projects in Ontario. As Legal Director of the Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation, Mr. Warner led Ontario’s legal team in creating the $250 million Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund (focused in part on clean energy technologies), the $205 million Ontario Venture Capital Fund and establishing the Ontario Capital Growth Corporation. Mark’s experience with online technologies and e-commerce includes: participating in OECD-wide policy work on laws and regulations affecting e-commerce, acting as Chair, ICC Competition Commission Working Party on E-Commerce and Competition Policy, serving as an original ICANN domain name dispute resolution arbitrator for eResolution and WIPO and as Rapporteur of the Hague Conference on Private International Law Commission on Jurisdiction for Torts in Electronic Commerce.
Mark is a past Chair of the International and Economics Committees of the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law as well as a member of the Section’s Task Forces on Competition Policy and NAFTA and Antitrust in the Global Economy. In addition to being a lawyer, Mr. Warner has a Masters Degree in Economics from the University of Toronto.