OTTAWA – The movements of Canadians, including trips to the liquor store and pharmacy, were closely monitored on their mobile phones without their knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report sent to a parliamentary committee.
Analysts investigating the BlueDot epidemic have prepared reports using anonymous data from the Public Health Agency of Canada to help it understand travel patterns during the pandemic.
The federal government provided one of these reports to the ethics committee of the House of Commons while investigating the collection and use of cell phone data by the Public Health Agency.
The report reveals that the agency was able to see a detailed picture of people’s behavior, including visits to the grocery store, gatherings with family and friends, time spent at home and trips to other cities and provinces.
Deputies from the ethics committee expressed surprise at the details of the report, although all identification information was removed.
“Questions remain about the specifics of the data provided – whether Canadians’ rights have been violated and what advice has been given to the liberal government,” said Damien Kurek, a Conservative MP from Battle River-Crowfoot.
On Wednesday, the commission released a report on the overall investigation into the agency’s collection of telephone data during the pandemic. He concluded that the government should tell Canadians whether it is collecting data on their movement and allow them to give up.
The Public Health Agency said it took very seriously the protection of Canadian confidentiality and the analysis of Canadian movement it received, “not about tracking people’s travel to a specific place, but rather about understanding whether the number of visits to specific places have increased or decreased over time. “
“For example, BlueDot points of interest identify the number of visits to grocery stores, parks, liquor stores and hospitals,” a spokesman said. “All we get is the location of the point of interest and the number of visits for a particular day.”
Adam van Coverden, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, sent the sample BlueDot report to the Ethics Committee on 31 January. It covers movements in September 2021.
The report provides information on how many people have moved between certain cities, such as the Abbotsford border community, British Columbia, and provinces and territories. It shows traffic across the Canadian-US border, comparing travel to previous weeks and years since 2019.
The locations of the telephones allowed the agency to obtain a photo of gatherings that take place in people’s homes, such as on Labor Day weekend. The report includes a schedule recording hours spent away from home in each province between Christmas 2020 and the week of 19 September 2021.
Kamran Khan, founder and CEO of BlueDot, said the company’s role was to produce “infectious disease insights” rather than collecting location data directly from mobile devices.
He said BlueDot is not interested in people’s movements or lifestyles.
“Our only goal is to help protect lives and livelihoods from infectious diseases, which requires intelligence on general population trends,” he said.
The company has provided anonymous and aggregated data from third-party vendors, so there is no information about the specific device from which the data comes.
“None of the information ever includes demographic information or specific identifiers or anything like a name, phone number, email or address,” he said.
“The data and analysis we provide are indicators: statistical summaries of anonymous device information, such as the total number of devices traveling between two cities.”
The Public Health Agency gave Canadian Press an example of how data is presented to them, showing the addresses of beer and alcohol stores, the number of visits and the date of visits. It did not include names or personally identifiable information.
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