OTTAWA–Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he believes Canadians would voluntarily provide personal information via mobile or digital tracking applications to allow the government to trace contacts of people infected with coronavirus.

However Canada’s chief public health officer cautioned Wednesday that technology cannot replace human tracing efforts, and risks producing false positives that could flood a testing system still not operating at full capacity.

The use of digital apps will need to complement the labour-intensive but effective infectious disease control done by public health units across the country, said Dr. Theresa Tam.

“It’s not that every case perhaps could be traced using these apps,” she said. “It’s an adjunct.”

Both Tam and Trudeau underscored privacy concerns are of “paramount importance” to the government, despite the use of digital surveillance technology in other countries.

Speaking in French at his daily briefing, Trudeau said he thought that, if asked, many Canadians “would be open” to providing some information that would normally not be provided “simply because of this pandemic, this emergency. But where exactly should we draw the line? That remains to be seen.”

The federal and provincial governments this week signed onto national guidelines in advance of easing epidemic controls that set out the importance of contact tracing. Trudeau said his government is looking at various technological options to aid that task, though he specified none.

“Even in an emergency, we’ll be careful about what we’re going to ask Canadians. It might be possible to allow this to be voluntary,” he said in French.

“Getting the balance right will be extremely important.”

Contact tracing can be vital during a pandemic in which asymptomatic and presymptomatic people may transmit the virus, there is no vaccine or effective treatment, and no clear evidence that people who have been infected once and recovered develop any kind of lasting immunity.

In a letter to Trudeau on April 20, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association warned the government against mandating the use of surveillance technologies.

“There are no magic bullets — not in big data, not in automated decision-making about individual risk, and not in automated contact tracing,” wrote CCLA executive director Michael Bryant, a former Ontario attorney general, and Brenda McPhail, the CCLA’s director of its privacy, technology and surveillance project.

“This is not to suggest that technology can never support public-health led efforts. However, involuntary collection of information by governments remains unwarranted today and any requests for voluntary participation should be considered carefully. Nor should existing privacy laws be suspended for proposed public surveillance.”

But some infectious disease experts believe that Canada should undertake more aggressive contact tracing efforts.

Dr. Peter Phillips, an infectious disease specialist at the University of British Columbia, said he is concerned Canada has been “slow to express interest in pursuing digital technology as a means to enhancing the contact tracing and quarantine initiative.”

He said Canada should look to places like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, which were able to control the first wave of the epidemic. He thinks Trudeau is likely right that people would consent to more digital tracking, especially if it was not imposed upon them as a first step.

“The playbook’s been written by these few countries,” Phillips said. “Why would we not adopt it?”

The use of digital technology, including text message services, has proved valuable to promote compliance in other areas of health care, he said, adding it’s used to encourage people to take HIV and tuberculosis medications.

But Tam said there is no guarantee contact tracing apps work to control an epidemic like this.

“Other concerns are it’s a bit like lab testing, it’s sort of false positives, where you just happen to maybe drive by, swing by, pass someone and suddenly your phone goes ‘bing,’” she said. “That would alarm a whole bunch of people. They may then show up to be tested when in fact they were not at risk.

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“I think the bottom line though, is the considerations of the people on the front lines of public health who are doing contract tracing and whatever it is would be helpful to them.”

However, Tam’s deputy noted that it is a political decision as much as it is a public health one. Dr. Howard Njoo said there is a federal-provincial group now looking at the range of apps and working with counterparts in other fields, such as ethics.

“It is not simply science and public health that matter. We’re part of this conversation at the end of the day. That’s a decision up to decision makers,” Njoo told reporters.

For now, Tam said that the provinces have advised that they have “contact tracing capacities,” and Ottawa has compiled a roster of tens of thousands of volunteers to help if needed.

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