Opposition parties team up to call emergency House health, ethics committee meetings

While Parliament is not set to resume regular sittings until the end of the month, opposition parties are pushing for early recalls of two committees to dive into the federal government’s current COVID-19 response efforts and use of Canadians’ cell data to inform public health measures.

The Conservatives’ call for an emergency meeting of the House of Commons Health Committee has been met with support from both the Bloc Quebecois and NDP, seeing MPs from all three opposition parties team up to pen a letter to that committee’s chair, Liberal MP Sean Casey.

The MPs are requesting Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, as well as a slate of senior health and procurement officials, appear to discuss where things stand on offering surge support to provinces facing shortages, quarantine length guidance, availability of boosters, rapid tests and COVID-19 theraputics, as well as access to N95 masks and potentially variant-specific vaccines.

The House of Commons is not scheduled to resume until Jan. 31, however, if at least four members of a committee from at least two different political parties call for an emergency meeting, one can be convened.

The letter— signed by the four Conservative MPs on the committee as well as Bloc Quebecois MP Luc Theriault and NDP MP Don Davies—requests that the meeting be held before the end of the week, and be at least three hours long.

As well, the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois have co-signed a request to for the House Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee to convene an emergency meeting to look into the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) use of anonymized mobility data during COVID-19 pandemic.

The letter, sent to committee chair and Conservative MP Pat Kelly, doesn’t specify timing or the parameters for who would be called to testify as part of the study.

As The Canadian Press has reported, PHAC said that its analysis of mobile location data is used to inform policy-making decisions and the effectiveness of public health messaging and restrictions 

Cell phone mobility data has been used by various levels of government throughout the pandemic for similar purposes. Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, Google said it would be sharing Canadian users’ location data with governments through regular movement reports.

Speaking to why the federal Conservatives are now calling for a deeper look at this practice, Conservative MP and committee member John Brassard told reporters on Monday that he thinks Canadians expect elected officials to ensure there is “appropriate oversight” on these types of programs.

“It is vital that we do not allow the COVID response to create permanent backslide of the rights and freedoms of Canadians, including their fundamental right to privacy,” Brassard said. He has also recently written to Canada’s privacy commissioner, asking Daniel Therrien to investigate whether the agency’s use of this data constitutes a privacy violation.