Critical thinking means trying to identify the ideological motivation for everything we are offered.
Why are we being offered such and such a thing?
Maybe, indeed, there is a benefit to using this data if it is done in a surgically relevant way. Let's face it, it's like putting a lid on a boiling pot. You're trying to control a mechanism that wasn't created to allow the Canadian government to deal with an epidemic. That's what critical thinking is all about, trying to identify the ideological motivation of products and social modelling. A mechanism has been created that allows for surveillance, that allows for control, that allows for predictability and manipulation.
I lived in East Germany. I saw people who could, if they wanted to, access the files that the Stasi had compiled on them. These files contained all sorts of entries, including telephone tapping and so on, like tailing of citizens who were considered to be undesirable elements of society. The people who had access to their Stasi files were terrified. Yet these files were nothing compared to what Google, Microsoft and Apple know about us. The Stasi files were nothing compared to that.
Today, if people can get access to the harvested data... I can tell you that it happens. Sometimes lobbyists go to public decision-makers and show them what they know about them. It's not pleasant.
When you find yourself in that kind of situation, then you think that there may be a tiny percentage of relevant uses that you can make of these instruments, but are they essential to those uses? I don't know, but I doubt it.
In any case, we cannot avoid asking the question in a general way. Today, there are a considerable number of books on this subject. As you can see, I've collected some myself, and I'm not working on that. They're all books criticizing the hold of digital technology on our lives, which dispossesses us intellectually and rationally.