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Government use of vaccine mandates and mobile phone tracking were ‘necessary and proportionate’, Commissioner found
Published on 03 June 2023 • Last updated 41 minutes ago • read for 3 minutes
Philippe Dufresne watched several programs during the pandemic, including a Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) program that used cell phone data to test Canadians’ compliance with quarantine orders. Photo by Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
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OTTAWA — Canada’s privacy commissioner has largely cleared the government of violating Canadians’ rights with a host of programs that raised complaints during the COVID-19 pandemic, including vaccine mandates, cell phone tracking, and the controversial ArriveCan app.
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“Overall, with few exceptions, our investigation found that the measures taken by the government during the pandemic complied with relevant privacy laws and were necessary and proportionate in response to the unprecedented public health crisis,” said privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne. in a report presented this week.
Dufresne watched several programs during the pandemic, including a Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) program that used cell phone data to test Canadians’ compliance with quarantine orders.
The program was the subject of a parliamentary committee inquiry, with many opposition MPs complaining that Canada’s privacy rights had been violated by the widespread data collection. A motion in parliament called for PHAC to shut down the program completely.
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But the commissioner said the government had taken reasonable steps to obtain anonymous data and ensure it remained anonymous, “reducing the risk of identifying individuals below the threshold of ‘serious possibility’.”
The Commissioner said complaints about this program were “unfounded”.
The Commissioner has also taken a close look at vaccine mandate programs for both travelers and the public service. It found in all but a handful of cases that the information had been stored in a reasonable manner.
“We found no evidence that the institutions overshare or use the collected personal information for inappropriate secondary purposes.”
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The Commissioner felt that when the mandates were first brought in they were reasonable but that the government should have been clearer about the targets.
“We have recommended that if Transport Canada considers mandatory collection of personal information for transportation safety purposes in the future, it more clearly spells out both its intended objectives and the scope of such measures,” he said.
What was reasonable in the fall of 2021 may have been less in the summer of 2022, according to the deputy. He added that it’s generally important to distinguish between whether programs are about protecting others or getting people to protect themselves.
“The broad scope of transportation safety did not distinguish between what may be appropriate to protect individuals from the risks imposed on them by others, and those that individuals can accept for themselves.”
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The deputy did accuse the government of a problem with the controversial ArriveCan app. It turned out that people who used a specific version of the app on Apple phones and took a specific set of steps were told to quarantine.
We took the position that even during a public health crisis, privacy laws and other safeguards still apply…
New report from Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne
The commissioner felt that this glitch, which eventually affected about 10,000 people, should have been caught early in testing. The Commissioner said the Border Service should have acted more quickly when the problem arose.
“It took the CBSA more than three weeks to prevent the error from affecting new travelers, and nearly a month before a correction was sent to all affected individuals.”
The Commissioner said the government has generally done a reasonable job of balancing privacy rights during the pandemic, but said they must protect privacy even in difficult times.
“We took the position that even during a public health crisis, privacy laws and other safeguards still apply and should not be seen as a barrier to the proper collection, use and sharing of personal information.”
Twitter: Ryan Tumilty
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