Evidence of meeting #17 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

François Perron  Director, CyberQuébec
Fay Arjomandi  Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mimik
Colin McKay  Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
Eric Johnson  Partner, British Columbia Public Sector, Global Business Services, IBM Canada

6:25 p.m.

NDP

Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON

If I could just interrupt, they are overwhelmed right now.

I know you are going to get cut off, and my point is that we're overwhelmed and might need a more comprehensive solution, but thank you.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

6:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado

Thank you very much.

We are now moving into the third round. The next round of questions goes to MP Patzer.

You have five minutes.

May 21st, 2020 / 6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm going to begin with IBM. In your opening remarks, you referenced a single source of truth. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on whose truth that is.

6:25 p.m.

Partner, British Columbia Public Sector, Global Business Services, IBM Canada

Eric Johnson

That's an excellent question.

When you're pulling data together, you want to have one source. The problem is if you have multiple.... For instance, suppose you implement multiple contact tracing solutions, and you're pulling data into multiple databases. When you're asked a question, you could get three answers, right? It's okay to have multiple solutions. You just want to make sure that the data at a provincial level is coming in and it is a single source of truth.

From that, you can then do systems of insight. You can build predictive modelling tools, but at least you have the confidence that the data you have is in one single place.

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Right, so if it's a single source of truth, would all three answers, per se, still be available, though?

6:25 p.m.

Partner, British Columbia Public Sector, Global Business Services, IBM Canada

Eric Johnson

For sure. It's integrating it so that you know you're drawing it from only one source and you're not drawing it from multiple sources that might contradict one another or you might not get a full answer, that sort of thing. You want it all in one place.

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Right. Thank you.

I'm going to switch to Mr. McKay from Google.

We've heard here tonight that 60% to 80% is required for tracing apps to be effective. In the U.S., the adoption rate appears to be quite low. NBC recently reported that the highest usage is at around 2%, in South Dakota. Why do you think it is so low, and, how can you make the case to Canadians that these apps will be effective and useful as well as respectful of their privacy?

6:25 p.m.

Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada

Colin McKay

In response to your first question, I think we're at only the initial stages of the rollout of either the API or the apps.

To the second part of your question, I think it's up to the public health authorities and the governments to make the case to their citizens that there's a need and an obligation to use these applications for the greater public health. We're simply providing the tool that enables them to make those apps more effective and more productive.

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

You talked earlier about updates being put through with tracing built in or to make its operation more app-friendly. How easy would it be for, say, Android or iOS or an Apple platform to force an update onto a device without the end-user knowing that he or she had received that update?

6:25 p.m.

Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada

Colin McKay

I can speak only to the Android platform, on which you receive notifications when there are updates to either an app or the operating system itself, which give you a description of what is happening and why it's taking place. Then once again, even after the implementation of the updates, you can make the decision within the permissions to deny access to Bluetooth and to deny access to location information. So even if there is the functionality, you can still turn it off on your device.

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Reuters reports that 23 countries have expressed interest in your technology. Are any of these countries problematic in terms of their human rights record, and would you make this technology available to such governments?

6:25 p.m.

Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada

Colin McKay

I'd say that we provide this technology to public health authorities in the pursuit of public health. I can't speak to what countries those might be and what conditions there may be. We're still in the early days and we're still in the process of actually rolling out the API.

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Right, but if YouTube is willing to shut down users because they contradict a world health order, if we have countries in which health authorities are in gross violations of human rights, would you deny them access to the platform?

6:25 p.m.

Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada

Colin McKay

I think we're still in the hypothetical when we're talking about the particular Apple-Google project.

6:25 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Right, but there are lots of countries that are predominant in the world, and they have their own health authorities, but they also have gross human rights violations that have been covered up through misinformation and different scenarios. Would you prevent them from utilizing this technology?

6:30 p.m.

Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada

Colin McKay

Once we roll out the API, there's a process engagement between Google and the government and the public health authority for the implementation. We need to make sure that they respect our terms and conditions and the terms of service around the API use before it's actually rolled out to their app.

6:30 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Thank you.

Last, would you allow information sharing between countries if they were using the same app? Again, if you had multiple countries with bad human rights records, would you allow them to share records with one another?

6:30 p.m.

Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada

Colin McKay

The way we've structured the app is that it's on device storage, and then it's uploading to public health authorities. It's meant to be binary that way, and any information sharing would be between the health authorities separate from our API or our OS movements.

6:30 p.m.

Conservative

Jeremy Patzer Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Thank you.

6:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado

Our next round of questions goes to MP Longfield.

You have five minutes.

6:30 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you.

I'm going to continue along the path that Mr. Patzer was on with Mr. Erskine-Smith.

I want to explore first of all with Mr. Johnson from IBM, and then go over to Mr. McKay.

It's great to see you again. I know you helped to guide us through Washington when INDU visited there last Parliament. A lot of what we do relies on co-operation and coordination with the United States. We are working on our digital strategy and including the digital charter looking at increased penalties and enforcement powers. I know we have worked with organizations like IBM on some of our strategy in terms of managing data and anonymizing and aggregating it, working with Statistics Canada.

When we're working with the United States, we have some data treaties, and IBM is obviously on both sides of the border, in fact across a lot of borders, which gives us some international exposure to opportunities for data sharing in the right ways. Could you maybe comment on the work that IBM is doing in terms of large-data management and storage?

6:30 p.m.

Partner, British Columbia Public Sector, Global Business Services, IBM Canada

Eric Johnson

I can comment at a high level. I'm not an expert in this space, but I can tell you that, for instance, when we are implementing a system in Canada in particular that is going to deal with public health information, PHI, we have to abide by the provinces' rules and the federal rules. It has to reside in Canada. It can't cross the border or anything like that. We adhere to that.

We have a set of data-specific legal counsel that guides us, and we interact with local, typically provincial, lawyers or federal lawyers, if that's the case, but that's generally.... Because of that, we can give a perspective from Europe or from whatever jurisdiction we need to talk to. That's pretty high level, but that's what I've been involved in.

6:30 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

That's good.

I know at the University of Guelph, IBM is a partner looking at data around crop production, crop tracing and tracing of disease within crops. This would be something similar, only on human health.

6:30 p.m.

Partner, British Columbia Public Sector, Global Business Services, IBM Canada

Eric Johnson

Yes. Again, the type of data is very important in how it's shared. You may want support or people working on your data or working on your project, but they're not within Canada. Then they have to abide by all the privacy and security legislation. We have to make sure they're not seeing that data. There are all sorts of anonymization tools, and I'm sure other colleagues could comment on it, but that's something we do as well.

6:30 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

It's those things that the general public, in terms of the rules around anonymization and aggregation to make sure public privacy is protected.... People distrust government and people distrust big companies. You're one; we're another.