Evidence of meeting #8 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was consent.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Could we get clear about exactly what the business model is?
How is it that you have been able to take the subject matter expertise as a frontline physician and recognizing, hopefully, the support and the need for the privacy of health information, even in the instances of pandemics...? In which way did you find this an opportunity where there could be commodification in a profit model or motive for this particular point in time?
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of Toronto, BlueDot
To respond to that, BlueDot has a for-profit business model. We use any revenues that we are generating for the purpose of reinvesting back in job creation, in innovating and in developing better solutions and technologies, as I mentioned, for detecting, assessing and responding to outbreaks.
I also want to highlight that BlueDot is a certified B corporation, a type of social benefit corporation that is oriented around social good. I've chosen that business model because it is an opportunity to scale the impact that we could have—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you.
I have two questions that are a bit more specific.
We've heard the conversation about there being the approximate location and a time-stamp. How approximate is the location of the data?
Director, Data Science, BlueDot
GPS data is not located at a precise point in space. It's—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
In the weekly reports on mobility trends that have been prepared by and received from BlueDot, among other things, the percentages are shown of increases and decreases in time spent in a home and in outdoor gatherings, the number of movements and other measurements.
How would you arrive at these percentages if it's just an approximation of where they are? You would have to have residential-level analyses.
Director, Data Science, BlueDot
It's an excellent question. That's a good example.
The specific analysis of “home” is not a reference to a home in the sense of a person's home. It's the primary location of the device, defined as a zone of about 600 square metres. The purpose of that analysis is to distinguish devices that are staying close to their primary location, versus those that are moving about, as a proxy for contact rates in the population.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It's pretty safe to say that people bring their cellular devices with them wherever they go, so 600 metres seems to be, although approximate, a fairly small circumference.
I know that I'm out of time, but I look to revisit this line of questioning in my next round.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
Thank you, Mr. Green. You'll have the opportunity to do that, but first we will go back to Mr. Kurek, who is possibly sharing his time, I understand.
Go ahead, Mr. Kurek, for five minutes.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
One of the concerns I have.... I represent a rural constituency, where population density is significantly less than in major urban centres. Are there specific protocols in place to ensure that those who may live in rural Canada have their privacy protected?
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of Toronto, BlueDot
Do you want to take that one?
Director, Data Science, BlueDot
Yes. I'm happy to speak to that one.
Our general practice is to aggregate either by time or by a geographic boundary defined by population for all analyses we supply to the agency.
In the case of a rural setting, the smallest geographic boundary would be defined by the underlying population as calculated by Statistics Canada. That would be a relatively large spatial area. However, we would still, in that situation, only report statistical summaries, numbers of devices, proportions and percentages. There would be nothing conceivably identifiable or associated with an individual device, or anything like that.
I would reassure a rural constituent that there's no prospect of identification, even in that setting.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Thank you.
I appreciate the information and look forward to receiving the more detailed information that's available on the dashboard.
Specifically in terms of your relationship with PHAC, we learned quite recently from the Privacy Commissioner that they were not consulted in regard to the acquisition of mobility data.
Did that come up in the conversations that took place over the course of BlueDot's relationship with the government?
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of Toronto, BlueDot
Thank you for the question.
Over the course of the relationship with the Public Health Agency, the issue of privacy did come up on many occasions. We had that conversation directly with the Public Health Agency about procedures and how we were working with the data and so forth. Certainly, I wouldn't have full knowledge of how the Public Health Agency may have spoken to the Privacy Commissioner. I can't speak to that specific piece, but between BlueDot and the Public Health Agency, this was a topic of discussion over the course of the relationship.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Thank you.
In terms of the siloing of data, certainly it's logical that the Public Health Agency of Canada would need data to develop policies related to pandemic response. Was the data that BlueDot provided subject to a siloing where you were assured that the data would only be used within the Public Health Agency of Canada or is it available for the Public Health Agency of Canada to possibly share with other departments?
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of Toronto, BlueDot
I'd have to go back to our specific agreements and contracts. Our work with the Public Health Agency of Canada was largely for the agency to be able to support local, national and provincial...and these types of decisions across the country.
To my knowledge, I'm not entirely aware of what the agency may have done and how they may have shared this with other jurisdictions across the country. We provided data to the Public Health Agency for the purposes of better coordination across the country in terms of the response to the pandemic.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Thank you for that.
I'm curious if you have a relationship with other levels of government, whether municipal or provincial, in your work here in Canada.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of Toronto, BlueDot
Yes, we do. Any of the work we have done with regard to COVID-19 response in Canada, and in particular around these types of data, have only been with public health institutions in Canada at the provincial and municipal levels.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
I have one quick final question.
There was a RFP for continued collection and use of mobility data that spoke to postpandemic uses. The government delayed that RFP to increase competition. I'm curious as to why BlueDot didn't submit a proposal with that RFP that's now been delayed by the government.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
I'm terribly sorry, but I'm going to have to ask the witness to deliver a five-second response or else return to it in a future round.
Please go ahead.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of Toronto, BlueDot
We are not a mobile device location data business. We are simply an infectious disease insights business. I believe that RFP was more oriented towards cell tower based data.
Director, Data Science, BlueDot
To be clear, that RFP was exclusively about cell tower data, which we don't possess, so we're not eligible for that RFP.
Conservative
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our guests, Dr. Khan and Mr. Demarsh, for joining us today. My questions are coming to you from Richmond, British Columbia.
I wanted to talk a little bit about the opt-in clause. The more comprehensive the data is, the more useful it is. What effect does the opt-in clause have on the usefulness of a dataset? Either witness can respond.
Director, Data Science, BlueDot
I'm happy to speak to this.
In this context, because the data are only de-identified location information, there's no degree of consent for additional information. We never receive anything beyond the de-identified location or aggregated summary metrics related to movement. For this purpose, there's no notion of degree of consent or additional information that we could obtain per device or in aggregate.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
I asked a previous witness a similar question: If they had indicated that it would have been better to have an opt-in versus the opt-out, I'm just wondering if it would be useful. The data does not appear to be useful if we do have the opt-in.