TORONTO, ON- MARCH 5 - Premier Doug Ford answers a question as Members of Provincial Parliament debate during Question Period as the Provincial Legislative Assembly sit at Queen's Park in Toronto. March 5, 2020. Steve Russell/Toronto Star

On the heels of reports that Israel’s Prime Minister has authorized the use of cellphone data to trace the movements of COVID-19 patients, Ontario Premier Doug Ford says that all options are currently being considered, and that both Rogers and Bell have been in contact with the province already to offer “all resources to help us out.”

“Everything’s on the table right now,” Ford told reporters on Monday, after being asked whether his government would consider using cell phone data, to aid public health in their contact tracing investigations for confirmed cases.

Such a move would likely require federal intervention, given their jurisdiction over telecommunications in Canada. Ford lauded the province’s businesses in his morning comments, saying they were “stepping up to the plate” amid Ontario’s virus response efforts — but didn’t specify what, precisely, the two major telecom companies had offered the PCs.

(Bell did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication on Monday. A spokesperson for Rogers said the company had not made any offer to give the province access to cell phone data for COVID-19 tracking purposes.)

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Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner, Brian Beamish, said his office wouldn’t challenge such a move, given the circumstances, so long as the government’s decisions were correlative to the outbreak.

“We are in the midst of a public health crisis, and as such, public health officials have the power to take extraordinary steps to keep the public safe. As long as those steps are proportionate, we will not second guess them,” Beamish told iPolitics.

The premier’s willingness to explore the option also evaded any immediate push-back from other leaders at Queen’s Park, with both NDP opposition leader Andrea Horwath and new Liberal leader Steven Del Duca telling reporters after his remarks that a wide slate of options needed to be considered given the current circumstances.

“I think anything that we can do to help people get through this is the right thing to do,” Horwath said.

“It’s going to continue to get worse before it gets better. We need to find every single way we can to support people in getting through this crisis and getting to the other side of it.”

Del Duca cautioned that he wasn’t an expert in efforts around virus tracing or patient tracking. “I think everything has to be on the table, and has to be considered, because this is such a critically important crisis we are confronting, together, in collaboration,” he told reporters.

The situation in Israel specifically made headlines Monday because the trove of data in question was previously undisclosed and gathered amid anti-terrorism efforts, the New York Times reported. The outlet called the use of secretly gathered data for public health reasons an “unprecedented move,” while cautioning that its use still had to be green-lit by a subcommittee. There has been no indication so far that Canadian officials plan to use secretly-collected data to combat COVID-19 or trace patients, though the country has covertly logged data before.

Canada’s spy service was found by a federal court in 2017 to have been capturing phone-identifying data of terrorism suspects for years, per the Globe and Mail, without judicial oversight or knowledge. However, the outlet reported at the time that CSIS’ use of data-capturing devices without a warrant was legal and proper in most instances, so long as the spy agency restricted what, exactly, it was doing with the information that had been collected.

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Israel is not the only country that’s looked to leverage cell data amid the global pandemic, with Al Jazeera reporting late last week that South Korea was enforcing a law granting their government wide access to GPS tracking from phones and cars, along with other data like CCTV footage. Authorities can then make some of that data public, Al Jazeera reported, so that anyone exposed to a confirmed patient can get themselves and those around them tested.

Telecoms in Canada have made other efforts in response to COVID-19, with Rogers, Telus and Videotron temporarily removing overage fees on internet plans on Friday, per the Canadian Press, and Rogers announcing a host of other novel coronavirus-prompted measures on Monday morning — from waiving long distance calling fees across Canada until April 30, to temporarily removing data caps on limited home internet plans until May 31.

As cases rapidly increase in Ontario, with 172 active cases and five resolved as of around 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon, public health’s contact tracing investigations are taking more time than before; Ontario officials are also unable to definitively rule out community spread at this point. The province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, David Williams, told reporters he was aware of another country harnessing phone data to assist with the contact tracing process.

“We are looking at all of those options there,” Williams confirmed at Queen’s Park.

“We would have to address the strengths of that, and some of the limitations therein. But all these ideas are being considered.”

This story has been updated with a comment from Rogers and more details about the federal government’s jurisdiction.