Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2022

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I see.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you.

With that, I'm going to now go to Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm really grateful for this opportunity. I echo again the concerns raised by Mr. Parsons from the Telecom Transparency Project, in that it's opening up an opportunity for the public to just look at how pervasive the collection of mobility data is and how, I would suggest, outdated our notions are of informed consent and privacy as they relate to protecting consumers.

My hope from this committee is that we get to a place where we can get very clear about what that looks like for protecting the individual consumer.

Mr. Chair, members of this committee and witnesses, it still feels that while I continue to hear this government suggest that it has followed the letter of its law, I'm still unclear about what the ethics are around the collection of this in what I would suggest to be a surreptitious manner.

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Dr. Tam, we've heard you and Mr. Allison say you have not been a part of this procurement process. Who within your agency was responsible for the procurement of this project?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

Mr. Chair, maybe I'll turn that over to Mr. Allison.

[Christopher Allison]

Thank you, Doctor.

Mr. Chair, it is my team and I who are responsible for the procurement. My apologies if I—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

The question was put to you earlier about why these companies were selected. I'll put that back to you. Why were BlueDot and Telus selected as corporations? Were other agencies within government maybe able to provide this information? I think about the budget and the scope of the Communications Security Establishment.

[Christopher Allison]

Mr. Chair, I'm not aware of what decision was taken in 2020. The way the two contracts work together ended up being quite complementary. We had the [Technical difficulty—Editor] from Telus, which we found to be more useful, even then.

In fact, we did not do the actual data collection or the modelling. This was done on our behalf by ISED's communicational research council. They provided us with the reports and with the de-identified, aggregated data. We could then go back and verify or see if we had any questions on the reports.

The dataset from BlueDot is different. It has different levels and different strengths and weaknesses, effectively. By using both of these datasets—which were in place in 2020, long before I joined the agency—the team was better able to understand the actual population-level mobility trends during the pandemic.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Through you to Mr. Allison as a follow-up, do these contracts allow for vendors to make a profit on the sale of the data they submit to PHAC, beyond the scope of the contract?

[Christopher Allison]

They do not allow that beyond the scope of the contract, no.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

They can't take this aggregated data and resell it for other commercial purposes.

[Christopher Allison]

My apologies, Mr. Chair. I misunderstood the first question.

The sale of this de-identified, aggregated data is part of the business offering of BlueDot and part of the business offering of Telus's “data for good”.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

When they're doing their RFP and showing that they can qualify for the tender, what would be other commercial examples where they would be taking this kind of data and selling it to corporate interests?

[Christopher Allison]

Mr. Chair, to be clear, they would not be selling the data that's provided to us. Again, I'm not privy to the inner workings of either Telus or BlueDot, so this question would probably be better posed to them.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Through you, Mr. Chair, to Dr. Tam, we recognize that there's been a statement of a need for this to be used as evidence on which to base decision-making. In the chief public health officer's opinion, if this contract were to cease, what would be lost in evidence-based decision-making on a move-forward basis, given this point in our pandemic preparedness and readiness?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

Mr. Chair, as I said, public health has had a lack of data to inform this decision-making, so this feeds into helping fill in some of those gaps. I think that insight moving forward is important, because policies are shifting and the spread of the virus is shifting.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

[Technical difficulty—Editor] one minute left.

Through you, Mr. Chair, could the chief public health officer provide one specific policy that would have been drafted and implemented using this mobility data?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

I cannot point to a specific policy. This is to be used by the provinces. The partnerships we have with them mean we share this information so they can use it for their own applications.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, in evaluating the re-offering of this contract, surely there would have been some kind of performance measures within the contract that would have shown its efficacy.

Through you to Dr. Tam—or Mr. Allison if it's more appropriate—how would the decision be made on whether or not the first contract actually met its mandate and scope?

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

This will be the last response. Go ahead.

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

Mr. Chair, I will start, but I think Mr. Allison may be the expert in this area.

All I can say is that we are at the actual start of the application of this type of information. If we're looking at an evaluation framework, we would be in the developmental stages of these kinds of data projects. As one can appreciate, in terms of maturation and evaluation, the indicators for success are definitely at the initial stages of the set-up for this type of data.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you.

We are out of time with that.

Now I'm going to go to Mr. Calkins. I understand the time will be shared.

Go ahead and start, Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

This is a quick question for Mr. Allison.

As the chief data officer, you are responsible for the care and control of the data, but you would not just go and collect data from any source unless you were directed to do so. Who directed you to go and get that information?

[Christopher Allison]

Mr. Chair, I was not directed by anyone to go and get this information. The decision to move forward with another RFP was partially due to the first one's closing, and because both the data scientists and—

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Allison, I'm not talking about the current RFP or the withdrawn RFP. I'm talking about the initial data. Somebody would have directed your organization or your portion of the organization to get the data. I'm simply asking who it was.

[Christopher Allison]

I do not know who may or if anybody did direct the organization to get data in 2020, as I was not here.