Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2022

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Allison, I want to go back to something you said. You said that 33 million Canadians who had their mobility data collected had an opportunity to consent by this. I just want to make this clear. The 33-million figure is the number of cellphones that exist in this country, so you're telling me that 33 million Canadians actually consented to having their data collected in the manner in which they did.

[Christopher Allison]

Mr. Chair, I actually have no idea where the number of 33 million came from. Through the Telus contract, there were a maximum of approximately nine million people who had consented and whose data was used through the Telus “data for good” platform, and approximately five million whose data was used through the BlueDot contract. Because the data is de-identified and aggregated, we have no idea where the overlap between those two datasets might be. The actual number is somewhere between nine million and 14 million.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Let's say it's nine million, then. Would those nine million people actually have consented for Telus to have that information passed on to the Public Health Agency of Canada? Would they have known that that information was going to come to PHAC?

[Christopher Allison]

Mr. Chair, those people would have not opted out of the Telus option that they had related to the “data for good”.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

What if they wanted to opt out? What options would have been available to them to opt out of having their data collected for the purposes of PHAC using it? Would they have had that option?

[Christopher Allison]

Absolutely. On the Telus website, again, it's a very simple process. You can go and enter your phone number. It's easily findable under Telus privacy mobility. You enter that, you hit submit, and it goes to Telus. I'm not sure they have a 24-hour turnaround, but they commit to getting back extremely quickly and making sure the device is removed.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

My next question is for Dr. Tam.

Dr. Tam, as I said at the onset, I think you can understand the concern of Canadians about having this information collected, I would argue, without their consent. I'm wondering why this information would be so important when public health agencies across Canada federally, provincially, municipally, territorially have access to data that could inform public health response, and not just now but going forward. If all of this information is there, why would we put at risk the privacy of Canadians by tracking their mobility data when all of this information already exists? There are significant risks and we'll hear about these as we get the security and privacy experts in front of us, but why would you not just use the data that's available to you and other government data that's available to determine public health response, both for COVID and in the future as it relates to the RFP?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

Mr. Chair, I just want to reiterate that this is de-identified and aggregated mobility data, and in the public health context we look at different types of data and often layer on different information. Why we believe it's an important tool for now and moving forward is that you can use it to lay on epidemiological data and determine whether there is an outbreak in a certain location. If you can actually, both in real time but maybe even in modelling and prediction, know how the mobility patterns go between different areas—whether it's Canada or in the global context as well to look at the disease spread potential—that can be one way of using this information.

The other application, as has been mentioned, is to help jurisdictions look at the effectiveness of their public health measures. This de-identified and aggregated data can certainly help with that. We are in the infancy, I believe, at public health in the application of big data, and we are doing this in a very careful way to respect privacy.

However, if you look at other reports and lessons learned, you will see that public health lacks a lot of information, and this lack of information is actually laid up quite nicely in some of our external advisory [Inaudible—Editor] on the pan-Canadian data strategy.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Quickly, can you tell me why BlueDot was chosen solely for this contract?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

BlueDot is one of the key groups, companies, in Canada. In fact, it was already set up prior to the pandemic to collect information. If there are any further details, I don't actually know that. Mr. Allison may have more specific details about the contracts.

[Christopher Allison]

Mr. Chair, I don't have details of why BlueDot was selected in 2020.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Then we'll go now for six minutes to Ms. Saks.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Dr. Tam, I want to thank you for joining us today. Throughout the pandemic, you've been a voice to Canadians about the clear importance that science and data have in guiding us and keeping Canadians healthy and safe throughout the past two years.

In December 2021, the public health officer's annual report discussed the value of mobility data to inform the pandemic. I'd like to ask you, if I may, how important it has been. You mentioned that there was a deficit of data in the Public Health Agency of Canada, so it seems that this process we've gone through has been vital to protecting Canadian communities.

Can you elaborate a bit?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

As I said, public health needs more capacity, more tools and more platforms, including data platforms, to inform our decisions. I don't mean that just for the Public Health Agency; my report points to the whole public health system in Canada.

Mobility data is one promising area where.... I think one can appreciate that a virus such as the one that causes COVID-19 is spread by human-to-human contact and via humans moving from one location to another. This type of data helps with both the epidemiologic assessments and forecasting potential areas of outbreak.

This can be added to the suite of tools, such as wastewater monitoring, that we've been trying to expand during this pandemic. That's why I've highlighted this as one of the data sources that could be very helpful, as well, in informing local jurisdictions of the effectiveness of some of the measures.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

To follow up on that, with regard to the current RFP that's being contemplated, what would the impact be on public health assessments and measures if it were delayed beyond its deadline, as we move through this fourth wave, the omicron variant?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

This is a valuable data source. I think it is most valuable if you have a more continuous ability to [Technical difficulty—Editor] time. As we can all appreciate, the dynamics of viral spread and the epidemiology are changing over time, and the policies being enacted in different jurisdictions across Canada, which can be quite different, are also shifting over time.

Having a gap in this data reduces our ability to look at those important policy measures, but it can be retrospectively looked at as well. It's not as good, maybe, as more real-time and more prospective analysis.

We're here to try to help the committee and provide the information you need. I think the request for proposal has been extended.

We look forward to your deliberations and the outcomes in your report.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

You have plenty.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

I'm going to share my time with Mr. Fergus, if that's okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Yes.

Go ahead, Mr. Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I usually ask my questions in French, but since this is a very specific question, I'm going to speak in Mr. Allison's native language.

Mr. Allison, in your response to a question from Mr. Brassard, you were talking about the consent of Telus or cellphone users. Can I ask you to phrase it...?

Perhaps you could help me out. From your answer, I think you were trying to say there is a consent that Telus users would give to allow their data to be collected as part of the “data for good” initiative, for an unspecified range of uses. For this, the contract the government had with that company would fall under a framework of data-appropriate use.

Is that a fair way of describing it? If not, could you please clarify?

[Christopher Allison]

The way the Telus opt-out works is that you can opt out. You are, I believe, considered by default to have opted in. Again, Telus uses mobility-related services as part of its business, and I'm not privy to that. You'd need to ask the company.

The “data for good” [Technical difficulty—Editor] uses the de-identified, aggregated data to understand the movement of populations. That is the contract PHAC has in place. A strengthened contract is what we're looking at for the new RFP.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Chair, I will ask for your obligeance. Part of Mr. Allison's testimony was technically—

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

I'll maybe clarify here. I stopped your time, Greg.

I am told—and the members participating via Zoom can jump in if I'm incorrect—that the audio is okay on Zoom and for the translators. It is simply our ability to hear live in the room.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I noticed that, because I've been looking at the screen and I could see him continue to talk, but—