(OTTAWA) The House of Commons is calling on the government to suspend Public Health Agency of Canada plans to collect data from millions of cellphones to understand Canadians’ travel habits during the pandemic.
Posted yesterday at 6:48 p.m.
MPs passed a motion on Tuesday urging Public Health to suspend its tender to expand this collection of cellphone location data, until the House is satisfied that the privacy of Canadians will not be compromised. affected by this analysis.
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics passed a motion on January 31 asking the House to suspend such data collection until data confidentiality are resolved.
The committee motion was supported by members of all parties, including the Liberals. On the other hand, on Tuesday, the Liberal members in the House voted against the motion supported by the Bloc, the Conservatives and the New Democrats.
According to the Bloc, the Liberal MNAs “turned their backs on their guns and withdrew their support for the Bloc initiative which they had previously supported in committee”.
“It is deplorable that the Liberals have disavowed the work of members of their own political party on an issue as fundamental as the protection of privacy. […] By declining the suspension of the call for tenders, the Liberal MPs are refusing to take the collection of personal information seriously,” said René Villemure, Bloc critic for ethics and the protection of information, in a press release. personal.
The motion asks that the call for tenders not be reissued until the Committee reports to the House that it is satisfied that the privacy of Canadians will not be affected.
Will the government act?
The government can ignore the motion if it wishes and allow the public health agency to proceed with its plans, even if the motion has been passed by a majority of MPs.
But John Brassard, the Conservative House leader, who sits on the ethics committee, urged the government to heed the wishes of MPs. In an interview, he said it was a “reasonable request” to authorize the ethics committee to investigate the implications for the privacy of Canadians and to suspend the call for tenders until that he has the opportunity to report his findings.
The privacy commissioner testified on the project before the ethics committee on Monday. “He offered to take a closer look,” said Mr. Brassard. He said he had received many complaints. »
No personal information?
The federal public health agency had issued a new tender on December 17 to track the location data of cell phone towers nationwide between December 1er January 2019 and May 31, 2023.
The RFP states that access to cell tower and carrier location data must be “secure, processed, and timely, as well as being properly vetted for security, legal, privacy, and security considerations.” of transparency”. The data also had to be stripped of any information that could identify users.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) maintains that “these analyzes and results provide situational awareness and help to inform policies, public health messages, evaluation of public health measures and other aspects related to public health response, programming, planning and preparedness”.
The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the case on Tuesday. PHAC has already said it has considered the privacy implications of the proposal and consulted with its own privacy experts.