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Toronto Mayor John Tory has walked back public claims he made Monday that the city was gathering cellphone data from telecommunications companies to spot places where residents continue to gather despite social-distancing measures to slow the spread of COVID-19.

As first reported by The Logic, Tory told thousands of attendees of an online event hosted by TechTO that the city had “cellphone companies give us all the data on the pinging off their network on the weekend so we could see, ‘Where were people still congregating?’” He called such gatherings “the biggest enemy of fighting” COVID-19.

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But on Tuesday, Tory said he had spoken incorrectly. “I made it sound like it was happening, not knowing it wasn’t happening,” he told the Toronto Star. The Star reported Tory had “raised the idea casually, but hadn’t spent time considering it deeply or putting it in use.”

Tory’s claims at the TechTO event came in response to a question about what those watching could do to assist the city’s efforts to fight the outbreak. Shortly after, The Logic contacted Don Peat, the mayor’s executive director of communications, with a transcript of the relevant section of Tory’s comments and questions including about to which companies he had been referring, what data the city had received and how it was using the information.