Very quickly.
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.
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.
6:05 p.m.
Partner, British Columbia Public Sector, Global Business Services, IBM Canada
Very quickly, yes, Canada is doing a great job. It's easy to be critical and it's important to be critical because we can improve very much. We can do more on the cloud. We can do a lot of digitization. A lot of countries are envious of the position we're in and how we've handled it. You can see it in the media from our public health leaders.
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you very much.
Our next round of questions goes to MP Gray. You have five minutes.
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. McKay, since the beginning of the pandemic, Google Canada has been sharing community mobility reports, publicly displaying changes in location trends. For example, in your May 13 report tracking your users' movements, retail and recreation visits are down 38%, transit stations are down 58% and parks are up 48%.
What apps does Google use to track people on these community mobility reports? Is it just Google Maps?
6:05 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
The community mobility reports are generated using aggregated and anonymized data from Google users who have opted in to location history. They've explicitly decided to share their location history with us on their mobile device. We've taken that and anonymized and aggregated it, as I said, to identify these five separate geographies or types of behaviour that give us insight and trends that are useful to public health authorities.
What's useful to notice about location history is that you're able to go into your location history and turn it off temporarily or delete it completely or delete areas you visited. You're also able to set an automatic setting that deletes it after a certain period of time.
6:05 p.m.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Okay. A variety of apps can be used. For example, Google owns YouTube, so if people are keeping their YouTube open while they're out and about, is their mobility being tracked?
6:05 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
Those two are not connected. If you're using your phone with location history enabled, that is one function within your phone and YouTube is another.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Okay.
Did Google Canada notify its users that their data would be used to produce these community mobility reports prior to the information becoming public?
6:10 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
We made the decision to both anonymize and aggregate so there isn't any personal information or any identifiable information related to a user. In this case, we didn't make any notifications because it is general trends, and they have analysis over a very broad subset of users.
When you look at the reports, some reports have omissions or complete gaps. That's because there wasn't enough information to do that anonymization accurately and properly.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Some have criticized Google for their lack of transparency when it comes to consent around location data collection. Wouldn't you agree that notifying users would have helped with this criticism?
6:10 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
We took an explicit step in using only the data collected by users that had opted into location history because they had gone through a very specific consent flow on their device that explained both the information being collected, as well as the controls they have over that information on their device. We felt that was the most appropriate constituency of our users from which to draw these insights.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
So those reports aren't necessarily a full representation but a slice or a cross-section of people.
Some of the phones have settings allowing a location only to be shared during the time of using an app, such as with Google Maps. In that scenario, would Google be including an individual's data in their community mobility reports when authorization may only be to track, say, for example, their location when Google Maps is being used?
6:10 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
In this case it was when they were opted into the location history, which is a continuing record of their movements that is shared only with Google within very specific conditions. In fact, the setting you've noted is actually one way that we've taken extra steps to give our users the information and the mechanism to signal that they don't in fact want their location tracked except when they're using an app. That one-time use only, when you're using an app only in this instance, is a way for us to provide additional control to the user.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Okay.
Mr. McKay, do you also share these community mobility reports with governments?
6:10 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
We share them inasmuch as we make them public to whoever would like to see them.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
There are the public reports. Would governments receive additional reports other than the ones that you're making public? Would they receive reports that would have more details than the public reports that you're posting?
6:10 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
No, they receive exactly the same reports that you can see on the website.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC
Okay.
Some have questioned the data accuracy of the location sharing use, pointing out that if locations are tracked through cellphone signal instead of through GPS data, that location could be inaccurate. Would you agree with that assessment?
6:10 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
There are certainly levels of granularity associated with what data you're using. We explicitly went with these five regions so that it was a broad category that didn't provide for—
6:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you very much.
Our next round of questions goes to MP Erskine-Smith.
You have five minutes.
May 21st, 2020 / 6:10 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Thanks very much, Madam Chair.
If Conservative MP Ms. Rempel puts up this video, you won't take it down, Mr. McKay. If I went to the corner of Woodbine and Queen and I made a video saying, “Everyone should drink bleach to cure COVID-19”, would you keep that video up?
6:10 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
That violates the guidelines and it should come down.
6:10 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
That seems sensible to me. Some level of science ought to play a role in your decision-making, surely.
6:10 p.m.
Head, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Canada
Yes, that's why we look to public health authorities for guidance and it's also why we have explicit definitions for our guidelines, so that people can interpret them.
6:10 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
In terms of transparency, if a video is taken down or downgraded in some fashion and it is a more debatable decision—it isn't so obviously objectionable as drinking bleach—what is the appeal process?