Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  I am going to somewhat reiterate the answer I gave earlier to Mr. Green. In our annual reports, we explained that in general terms. I will go back to the trust part of your question. Consent and control are ways to ensure that Canadians have trust. However, I don't believe that

Information & Ethics committee  We were not consulted. We asked for information in late 2021 about this process and were given some information, but I would not say that this constituted a consultation. We were informed.

Information & Ethics committee  Transparency is tough. As I said in my opening remarks, the government has a COVIDTrends web page that does a fairly good job of explaining to Canadians that their mobility data is used. You don't need to go through a 60-page privacy policy to find that out, but in order to get t

Information & Ethics committee  I would start with the fact that data, including personal data, is necessary for economic development, economic growth and for the social good. We're not saying that data should not be used. It is the way of the 21st century. It is the way of the future. However, the fact that d

Information & Ethics committee  I would say simply this: not necessarily a privacy shield, but laws need to be interoperable between countries and within Canada.

Information & Ethics committee  It is true that we have had meetings roughly every two weeks with the Public Health Agency on various measures related to COVID and their impact on privacy. In the period in question—it was in the early days of the pandemic, March and April 2020—there were a lot of subjects being

Information & Ethics committee  Data is de-identified because it was originally identifiable. We start with personal information. There's no question that a telco like Telus had information about its users' mobility data, because it is necessary for Telus to obtain that information in order to deliver the servi

Information & Ethics committee  When we are in engagement, whether with a public sector institution or a commercial organization, we receive detailed information about the information flows and the protections given to information, so as to be able to say not only that in principle privacy is respected, but tha

Information & Ethics committee  Indeed, and the law, of course.... We'll look at our framework and the law.

Information & Ethics committee  The framework was distributed to all departments and we have certainly had discussions with several of them, so my sense is that indeed the framework is known within the federal government.

Information & Ethics committee  There are a number of departments, maybe not a majority, but Health Canada certainly.... The Public Health Agency is the agency that consults us the most during the pandemic. One would expect that. A number of other departments—

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. They informed us of the program but declined our offer to look under the hood.

Information & Ethics committee  As I mentioned earlier, we offered our advice, but the government decided to seek it elsewhere.

Information & Ethics committee  In this case, I'm going on the premise that consent has a role to play in protecting privacy, but it's unrealistic in today's modern world to expect that all commercial or government use of a customer's data should be subject to consent. That brings us to the concept of consent t