Information & Ethics committee  Sure. None of what I've said so far should be interpreted as me saying that I don't think we should be doing this. It's what tests we impose upon ourselves. I think that in Canada we have kind of proportionality thinking. Are we limiting people's freedoms too much? Are we showing that the limitation actually serves the end we're claiming it's serving?

Information & Ethics committee  I'm sorry. We academics aren't very good at being concise.

Information & Ethics committee  I believe that the first balancing act is still very important. To pick up on the discussion between Mr. Bains and Mr. French, I think one of the things that makes the current situation really difficult is that the end goal of ensuring public health, which is assisted by data collection, can only be met if the vast majority of the population is enrolled in some way.

Information & Ethics committee  That's a very good example. We have these mechanisms in place, which are the sorts of things that people can't look at under the hood of these very complex questions, but here's someone who has been nominated precisely because we think that's their job. When they're sidelined, it tends to raise suspicion that there is something to hide, whereas—and I insist on this point—there might not be anything to hide.

Information & Ethics committee  It would probably be better if tried to provide you something in writing. I don't know how to say anything in 10 seconds.

Information & Ethics committee  I think that there are important uses that could be made of data that, in other circumstances than that of a pandemic, we would expect to be private. Publicity on the ends to which this data is being placed, the limits on the use of the data, like temporal limits—when we are going to stop doing it, what the indicator is with respect to the pandemic that is going to make us say we're no longer in an emergency situation that justifies this extraordinary use of data—would go a long way in reducing some of that uncertainty.

Information & Ethics committee  I will be very honest. Two years of pandemic is a long time, and I think things that were said two years ago are worth repeating regularly. We have lived through so much, and there have been so many twists and turns in the limitations and reductions in terms of rights and freedoms that I don't think this matter can simply be removed from public debate once and for all, at the beginning of the pandemic, to never come back to it.

Information & Ethics committee  That's difficult. That question could be considered leading. Once again, these are partisan actions or reflexes that probably have no place in situations like this one. I believe that, at some point, Dr. Tam said that it wouldn't be the end of the world to wait a few weeks for the committee to submit its report.

Information & Ethics committee  In my opinion, it's important that an elected official be the one to do so. I may have misspoken when I said that it would have been the same thing whether the Prime Minister or the chief public health officer of Canada had done it. At the end of the day, decisions on issues as crucial and sensitive as data use should be entrusted to elected politicians.

Information & Ethics committee  I will try to give a brief answer because I know that time is short. Polarization is a multiplayer game. Responsibility for the current polarization is shared among a number of players. For example, the media are partly responsible. A prudent politician, in the classic sense of the term, must be able to read the temperature of the room, in terms of polarization, in order to gauge how to communicate with the general public.

Information & Ethics committee  If I understand the question correctly, I think we're in a very different time now than we were two years ago, which the government has to take into account. All I'm saying is, premised on the assumption that everything that's being done in this domain is perfectly justifiable. I think we are at a time where trust in government requires that that justification be done in a much more overt manner than might have been the case at the very beginning of the pandemic when the general population was, perhaps, willing to give a longer leash, as it were, to the government to act in the public interest.

Information & Ethics committee  I will say two things very quickly. I am not a data expert. When I was invited to appear before the committee, I did some due diligence. I asked some expert colleagues here, at the faculty of law, whether it's true that data can be completely anonymized. In both cases, they gave me skeptical smiles.

Information & Ethics committee  You know, with two professors, it's difficult to—

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, you've said it yourself. I think one thing that will increase trust in the process is if there are very clear, self-imposed limits by the government. This, of course, won't guarantee that there won't be leakage from one department to another, but it will give Canadians and watchdogs, like the privacy watchdog, a clear threshold, a clear benchmark on the basis of which they can say that what you've done here outrepasse—to use a French word—the limits you have imposed upon yourself in order to justify before Canadians the use of this data.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you. I'm going to take 10 seconds of my time to correct the presentation that was made of me. I've been at McGill University for 10 years. I'm in the faculty of law and in the department of philosophy at McGill University. I'm not an expert on privacy. My work has focused on a number of areas, but two that are significant or relevant to our present discussions are, on the one hand, the justification and the limits on the justification of rights limitations in a liberal democracy.