(Ottawa) The Conservative and Bloc opposition in Ottawa want the House ethics committee to investigate the Public Health Agency’s decision to collect data from millions of cell phones, in order to understand habits displacement of Canadians during the pandemic.
Learning that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is seeking to extend this practice, Conservative and Bloc members want the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics is holding emergency meetings this month, while the House of Commons is still on holiday recess, until January 31.
Conservative MP John Brassard argued at a press conference in Ottawa on Monday that the pandemic was being used as a pretext to invade the privacy of Canadians – who were not even aware that a government agency was collecting location data from telephone towers cell phone and operators.
This data collection only came to light last month, when the federal agency sought to expand the practice, with a call for tenders.
M, Brassard says it is “very alarming” that a government agency is using the pandemic as an excuse to secretly collect mobile data from Canadians, without warning them. He wants to know what safeguards have been put in place to protect the privacy of citizens.
In a request for proposals published by the federal government on December 16, we learn that the PHAC wants to have access to the location data of cell phone towers and operators, but without personal identifiers, between 1er January 2019 and May 31, 2023. The call for tenders indicates that access must be “secure, processed and timely, in addition to being adequately verified for security, legal, confidentiality and transparency considerations” .
MP Brassard wrote last week to Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien asking him to look into the matter. The Ontario MP has since written to his Conservative colleague Pat Kelly, who chairs the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on Monday, asking him to hold an emergency meeting, before resuming work in the Commons in three weeks.
The Bloc ethics critic, René Villemure, had already made this request to Mr. Kelly on Friday. Mr. Villemure said the committee had the power to demand the suspension of this call for tenders and to open an investigation to reassure Canadians about what is being done with their personal data.
The Public Health Agency maintains that these data “help inform policies, public health messages, the evaluation of public health measures and other aspects related to the response” of the federal government to the COVID pandemic -19 “and for other public health applications”.