Information & Ethics committee  I'm not directly involved, but yes, of course I know it exists. It's a tool for monitoring influenza, and I think it's run by volunteers.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, again, I am not the person most intimately involved in this particular initiative. However, I know that because we've asked for de-identified and aggregated data, we do not get any information on pings at the Public Health Agency. I just wanted to clarify that, but in

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, may I pass this question on to Mr. Allison? I believe the data frame can be provided to this committee if they don't already have it, but it is very aggregated, like a health unit or a geographical area. I know that it's not even looking at numbers but rather proportio

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, as I said, public health has had a lack of data to inform this decision-making, so this feeds into helping fill in some of those gaps. I think that insight moving forward is important, because policies are shifting and the spread of the virus is shifting.

Information & Ethics committee  I cannot point to a specific policy. This is to be used by the provinces. The partnerships we have with them mean we share this information so they can use it for their own applications.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, I will start, but I think Mr. Allison may be the expert in this area. All I can say is that we are at the actual start of the application of this type of information. If we're looking at an evaluation framework, we would be in the developmental stages of these kinds

Information & Ethics committee  The definition of a pandemic and the declaration is done at an international level. At the Canadian level, we could certainly, together with the provinces, look at when we pass what I call the “crisis phase” of a pandemic, but we believe this virus is going to continue to affect

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, maybe I'll turn that over to Mr. Allison.

Information & Ethics committee  BlueDot is one of the key groups, companies, in Canada. In fact, it was already set up prior to the pandemic to collect information. If there are any further details, I don't actually know that. Mr. Allison may have more specific details about the contracts.

Information & Ethics committee  As I said, public health needs more capacity, more tools and more platforms, including data platforms, to inform our decisions. I don't mean that just for the Public Health Agency; my report points to the whole public health system in Canada. Mobility data is one promising area

Information & Ethics committee  This is a valuable data source. I think it is most valuable if you have a more continuous ability to [Technical difficulty—Editor] time. As we can all appreciate, the dynamics of viral spread and the epidemiology are changing over time, and the policies being enacted in different

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, I just want to reiterate that this is de-identified and aggregated mobility data, and in the public health context we look at different types of data and often layer on different information. Why we believe it's an important tool for now and moving forward is that you

Information & Ethics committee  We're using this for the purpose of the pandemic and looking at the mobility.

Information & Ethics committee  As Mr. Allison has said, the reports are shared with provinces, territories and the departments that are making policies.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, this is a novel data source, of course, but one feed, in particular, into data for looking at the response to the pandemic. Mobility data at this kind of aggregated level can be used when provinces and territories or local jurisdictions enact public health measures to