PUBLIC INTEREST ADVOCACY CENTRE LE CENTRE POUR LA DÉFENSE DE L’INTÉRÊT PUBLIC - Re: Application Regarding Pandemic Contact-Tracing at Application and Network Levels

This application asks the Commission to clarify that TSPs must follow the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act, to require all TSPs to notify the Commission of any steps taken for any government or private interest to facilitate contact tracing and to make those steps public, and to demonstrate the Commission’s active oversight of this contentious area. [...] We have attempted to serve and otherwise bring to the notice of all TSPs of this application in the hopes that they will comment and bring a wider perspective to the Commission but we submit that the Commission posting this application should serve as sufficient notice to all TSPs of the potential for the application to apply to them. [...] PIAC acknowledges the need for significant public health measures to deal with the pandemic and we support the government directives to self-isolate and otherwise social distance to slow the spread of the virus. [...] We are concerned about the lack of action by the CRTC thus far on many matters during the present epidemic, but in particular its seeming failure, or at least failure of transparency if the Commission instead is working behind the scenes, to vet and manage the developing and very serious matter of the interplay of Telecommunications Act and other privacy-related requirements within its area of jur. [...] We submit that the same high level of consumer privacy applies to the extent that arguments may be raised that government action, in the telecommunications sphere, only be judged by, or is only governed by, the federal Privacy Act, the provincial freedom of information and privacy acts or any sector-specific legislation applying to the provincial or municipal governments in the provinces and terri.