Thanks, Chair.
I just want to be really clear. This is an app that erroneously caused 10,000 people to have their civil liberties suspended and be ordered under house arrest, and a breach of that order was warned against with threat of jail time or fine.
There's been a characterization that this is a small number in the context of the total number of users of the app. This is offensive. This is 10,000 people who followed all of the rules. They broke no laws, and they were ordered not to leave their homes or they would be put in jail. They were ordered by an app that they downloaded in the app store.
There was no way for them to redress that grievance. There was nothing for them to do. When they called my office, as they called many other folks, we tried to intervene for them, and it was about day 16 or 17 of their 14-day quarantine before they were able to have demonstration that they were, in fact, still free.
It's so important that we highlight that.
Mr. Malone, you mentioned GC Strategies a couple of times. This is a company that has two employees. It took in $9 million. It did no tech work on this app that was entirely technological in nature, handling sensitive data. To be clear, this two-person company, when they did appear at a parliamentary committee, couldn't even say which of the two of them answered the telephone when the government called to award them a $9-million contract that they wouldn't have to do any tech work on. We don't know who their subcontractors are. There is a lack of transparency.
I've used a lot of time here.
You talked about securing access to information laws and potentially lobbying rules. Are you able to expand on that a bit with the remaining time?