Good morning, Mr. Chair.
I would like to say hello to all committee members. Under the current circumstances, I wish them good health this year.
As you know, my experience as an ethicist is always close at hand. In my work as an ethicist, I never meant to point fingers, but rather to enable better understanding for the common good. By the way, in that respect, I agree with what Mr. Brassard and Mr. Fergus said.
Of course, the situation that has come to light recently forces us to ask questions. I agree with Mr. Fergus that Health Canada had a worthy objective. I don't believe that the department was trying to spy on Canadians. But it does raise a lot of questions. Who acted on behalf of Health Canada? How was it done? What kind of data was it? For what purpose was the data collected? Why was it done? Who did it? What security procedures were put in place?
That does not take away from the intent to serve the common good, that is, Health Canada's desire to model the behaviour of Canadians to rid us of this pandemic we all want to see come to an end.
Many people I run into in public don't fully comprehend the issue of personal data. As you know, we've all clicked on “I agree” without reading the terms and conditions, which were unintelligible. We can save that discussion for another day. People don't appreciate this issue very well, and in order to do so, they need to see the big picture. The word “comprehend” comes from the Latin [Technical difficulty] “cum”, which means “together”, and “prehendere”, “to grasp” with the hand. To comprehend, one must be able to grasp the whole issue. The committee wishes to help people comprehend, that is, get a grasp of everything that is at stake.
We want to ensure that the pandemic is not used as an excuse to infringe on people's freedoms. As we have seen in the past, privacy quickly erodes when people are afraid and unsure. I'm thinking of the H1N1 era when I was working as an ethicist, or the security issues surrounding the 9/11 attacks.
So I am all for putting partisanship aside even though we clearly have different ideologies. However, we still need to agree that we are trying to serve the common good. I agree with Mr. Brassard's third point about the importance of looking forward.
Having said that, I would like to raise two other points. First, we need to understand why the first request was so opaque. Second, we need to understand how this request for proposals works.
My intention is to help our fellow Canadians to understand the situation, so that we can protect privacy, which is invaluable, and it's something we do not think about often enough.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.