How the Government Gets Canadians’ Cellphone Data

A man checks his phone as ice floes build up on the Fraser River in New Westminster, B.C., on Dec. 28, 2021. Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

Besides data from carrier Telus, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has been relying on companies that collect data through smartphone apps in order to get anonymized movement records of Canadians, The Epoch Times has learned.

It was revealed in December that PHAC has been conducting mobility analysis of Canadians, in part to inform pandemic policies and public messaging and to assess the effectiveness of lockdowns. PHAC said it did not and will not track individual Canadians, but rather looks at anonymized trends.