Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 28th, 2022

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

I see.

I agree with you about the damage done to public trust. What can we do now to restore that trust?

[Bianca Wylie]

Do you mean with ArriveCAN specifically?

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

Yes.

[Bianca Wylie]

With the setting up of a public oversight body, which we had, you could almost immediately replicate what was done for the COVID-19 Alert app. You bring in a group of people, you have meetings, they can help communicate issues back to government, and you can have an audit of the app and open the code. There are numerous things we could replicate from the lessons of the COVID-19 Alert app, so that's an easy one.

I think the other thing we need to do is be clear about what the pandemic impact was of ArriveCAN, because somehow we just keep getting this: “It's an emergency, and we have to do it.” However, what was the public health rationale, and what was the outcome of ArriveCAN on the pandemic?

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

The government didn't learn any lessons from the COVID Alert app before developing the ArriveCAN app. What is it going to take for the government to learn from its mistakes?

[Bianca Wylie]

I have no idea, because this keeps happening over and over again. I want to make clear that this notion of modernizing—by just thinking let's accelerate, let's modernize and let's be somehow in the future—has infected the public service and the culture of senior management.

I need to disclose that I saw people celebrating the number of downloads of this app in the middle of a public health crisis, in comparison with apps that have nothing to do with the public service. So the incentives inside the government need to be explored, because there are problems there within the public service.

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

[Inaudible—Editor] certainly reflect instead of react?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Please repeat your question, Mr. Villemure. There was an issue with the microphones.

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

All right.

Should the government reflect instead of react?

[Bianca Wylie]

If we want to look at how we want to modernize the government and the use of technology—and I understand that we want efficiencies—we cannot put efficiency over the experience of people who are receiving services from the Government of Canada. Sometimes people will need an inefficient approach, and what we have to figure out here is the balance. We cannot go all in on tech. We have to make sure we're building redundancies. Do people remember when we had the Internet outage? The app wasn't working at the airport for a day in Pearson, and of course we had redundancy.

The public service has to be built on redundancy. It can't just be all one way. We can do great technology, and we can build it, but we have to be intentional about how. We have to support every single person who needs to access the public service in an equitable way.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villemure.

Mr. Green, you have the floor for probably a little more than six minutes.

Go ahead, sir.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much. I'm happy to take my six minutes.

I want to welcome the guests. This is a very important investigation into, hopefully, some of the ways we can improve upon privacy and the use of technology.

I want to allow Ms. Wylie to expand on two notions to begin with. The first is this culture that she commented on. I'm wondering if Ms. Wylie could expand on some of her observations—in her opinion and in her own words—and how she feels the bureaucratic culture might be counterintuitive to being able to provide good and effective digital products to people who respect civil liberties and privacy.

[Bianca Wylie]

Thank you for the opportunity to expand on this.

As I understand, within the public service, at senior levels, if someone receives some political enthusiasm for an app or for a technology, for something that's going to be innovative or modern, there is very little space to push back and to say, “You know what? This approach might not make sense”, or to ask where this is coming from or from whom. Which firm or which person has an interest?

I need to return to the app stores for a moment, because if we need to understand anything.... At this point in time, in 2022, companies like Google and Apple want to be living in the infrastructure that we use in our public services across the board. They have no subject matter expertise to be involved in public health or border services.

The point here is that if we don't begin to understand the need to develop both good and future-oriented technology in the public service, there has to be room for senior management to say, “I hear what you want to do with technology, but this is actually a bad idea. Here are the reasons why.”

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You've picked up on an important point.

I'm getting feedback, Mr. Chair. I think somebody in the room might have a mike on.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I think Ms. Wylie had her mike on with the earpiece. Maybe that had something to do with it.

Is that better, Matt?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It is much better. Thank you.

I apologize.

I wanted to reflect on this notion that we have, perhaps, a culture that would reward corporate, capitalist metrics—i.e., reference downloads—versus the user experience and applicability for public use and public consumption, and ultimately the public benefit.

Is that a fair comment? Perhaps we've adopted too much of this kind of corporatization of public services in order to internally advance some careers and some pet projects.

[Bianca Wylie]

Yes, definitely.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You talked about the inequities that making a mandatory public service digital creates. Can you describe what some of those inequities might be?

[Bianca Wylie]

First of all, we know that not everybody has access to mobile devices or computers. However, far more important than that piece of it, which is known, is the digital literacy to use these things in a way to protect ourselves. There's an inequity there.

An interesting point about ArriveCAN is that, whether people are handing you information on a form or through an app, it's all heading up into an infrastructure and none of us know what it is. We don't know what's going on. If we can't start to explain that to each other—and this is why open government matters—you're not going to get the buy-in from people to use these things.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm not trying to be reductionist here, but can you define “open government”? Part of the challenge I have is that I feel like we get into these bureaucratic spaces and we use buzzwords all the time. We had a government that said they were going to be open by default, they were going to be the most transparent government and they were going to provide open government.

Can you define, briefly, what that might look like?

[Bianca Wylie]

There's open data, there's open science and there's open information. I believe these are the three circles of how this space is defined.

What's really important about open government—and I'm bringing you this from being a facilitator running public meetings—is that people may not like the decisions you make, but if you explain what you're doing, you can get to a good place from a democratic perspective.

To bring this all the way back to your question of what the inequities look like, it's not just, “Do I have a phone or not?” or “Am I comfortable or not?” This second piece, “Am I comfortable or not?”.... People were contacting me, much like Matt mentioned. They were scared. They didn't want to travel. They didn't know what they just did. They used an app. They weren't even sure what just happened.

That doesn't get measured in any metrics. That metric doesn't exist. You have these missing pieces of information about how this impacted people. We have, between me and Matt—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm not sure how much time I have left, so please forgive me.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

You have about 30 seconds, Matt.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

There's a really important piece that you can answer in a very short way, and it ultimately comes down to this: In your opinion, should ArriveCAN be audited by the Privacy Commissioner?

[Bianca Wylie]

Yes.