Government Operations Committee on May 25th, 2020

[Paul Glover]

We'll provide that through the clerk. I don't want to estimate.

I do know that there have been a number of steps too. There were problems with calls that weren't dropped, but frankly, simply never got answered. That was another issue. People would get in and the call would never get dropped; it would just never get answered and the business would shut. The departments have been adding on. They've virtually doubled the number of agents they've brought on, so we've handled that.

The other thing, in addition to the dropped call issue, is that we tried to stand up more channels so that people can use voice response. They can still phone in, but rather than speaking to an agent, they can ask frequently asked questions, they can enter their information if they don't have access to a computer and they can still enrol in the benefit. We've expanded the number of channels, and that has also made an improvement.

We'll get you a full breakdown of the progress from the outset to where we are today.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's helpful.

Mr. Chair, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to our five-minute round of questions, starting once again with Mr. Aboultaif.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you again, Chair.

Minister, the federal government wants to help provinces build a framework for contact tracing through personal cellular devices. Is it safe to assume that this is pre-COVID, or after COVID?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

This might be a question for the health minister, but I'll take a shot at it.

I think this is in response to COVID, and in response to the very important program of opening up our economy and enabling our businesses to continue serving Canadians. I think it is as we open up. Therefore, at that time, we need to be doing more contact tracing and more testing, and the federal government has offered to support the provinces, which are responsible for that.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Speaking of which, we know there have been previous attempts by this specific government to invade the privacy of Canadians, specifically the incident of Statistics Canada and personal banking information, about half a million of these records being out without the knowledge of Canadians.

We know that our people, Canadians, are very concerned about their privacy and their private information being leaked. That's in addition to, obviously, their being under constant surveillance. They'd be under surveillance all the time.

Could there be, or will there be, any chance that the voluntary contact tracing initiative could be made mandatory, yes or no?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I can't comment on that. I can say—

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Minister, I appreciate that but it's your department. You're going to have to be doing the work at the end of the day.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I know we'll be providing any advice, guidance and support we can as digital government. The provinces are doing the testing and the tracing. Our federal government has offered funding to help them ramp that up and has offered the work of federal employees to do the hours of contact tracing. However, through the chief information officer and our other public servants, we oversee very strong policies and guidance on privacy and respecting individuals' privacy.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Then you're not only supporting the provinces financially. You're also putting out guidelines or guidance as to how this is going to be done.

It's very important because Canadians are going to look at two things: They're going to look at their privacy, and they're going to look at the information that's needed by the government.

Between public safety and privacy, how are you going to cross that fine line?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

We have guidelines and laws around privacy. For example, SSC has a privacy risk checklist and a requirement for privacy impact assessments in many cases for new infrastructure or initiatives. That would be SSC's initiative.

Government's collection, use and disclosure is subject to privacy notice statements and consent forms, consent for any data to be used for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected. We have strong rules and we will make sure that the appropriate ministries are aware of them.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

In light of this whole thing, since this is happening because of COVID-19, so that at least Canadians, and even policy-makers on the opposition side, can understand where the government is headed with this, when was the last legislation or policy put forward by the ministry?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I'll ask my official, the acting chief information officer, Marc Brouillard, to answer that question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Monsieur Brouillard, respond very briefly, if you could.

[Marc Brouillard, Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat]

I'm sorry. Is the question, when was the last time the privacy policy was updated?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Yes.

[Marc Brouillard]

I don't have the exact date, but it has been a while.

I'm hoping to get that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Only because we're out of time, could you get the exact information that Mr. Aboultaif has asked for and submit it in writing to our clerk as soon as possible?

[Marc Brouillard]

I'd be happy to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We appreciate that very much.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We will now go to Mr. Weiler for five minutes, please.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister and the other witnesses, for joining our committee today.

I also want to give a quick shout-out to all the employees who have been quickly able to shift from working in the office to working remotely and continue to deliver a high level of service in a really stretched time. It's also incredible and amazing to hear that there have been no breaches of cybersecurity for public sector employees during the pandemic.

Minister, first, what is the Government of Canada doing to protect the personal information of citizens in this increasingly digitally enabled government?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

We were just talking about privacy, the government's privacy policy. Every public servant has training on the privacy policy and is aware of it.

Shared Services Canada has a very important role to play in the privacy of Canadians' data and personal information, because SSC is the main government infrastructure and storage of information. It's a very strong gatekeeper, actually, a custodian of the majority of this information. There are very clear guidelines for its staff on secure document use and storage, as well as an inventory of all personal information handled by SSC enterprise staff. They restrict and manage the collection, use, storage and disposal of data to respect the intended purpose and privacy laws. This is a high priority for us.

Paul, do you have anything to add?

[Paul Glover]

Thank you, Minister.

Just briefly, in addition to what you've said, any of the personnel who work in the data centres where this data is housed are subject to the appropriate security clearance. All the data centres are monitored. The data is encrypted, so even if we did look at it, we wouldn't be able to understand what we were looking at. You need the keys at both ends, so it is the departments that get that data back and are able to use it appropriately. We take that safeguard to make sure that anybody who handles it has the appropriate clearance, and that the data is always encrypted and only really available to those who need to see it when they need to see it.