There are few certainties about the pandemic legacy, despite claims that we will be changed forever. We are all by nature recidivists about behaviours and roles we are comfortable in.

Will we be kinder to each other, reward politicians who lead but don’t preen, pay greater respect and salaries to heroic front line workers — from grocery clerks to care home workers? We should make every effort to. But if the bounce back after previous plagues is any guide it will be a struggle.

One consequence appears to be almost inevitable: a vigorous debate over how we do public health management better without damaging Canada’s long history of tight controls on personal privacy.

Canadians have always had a deeper commitment to the sanctity of personal data privacy — especially where commercial use is involved — than many other nations. However, some greater freedoms for the state — and maybe even the private sector — to collect and employ more personal private health data seems more likely now.

Israel is using GPS tracking, cellphones and even surveillance drones today. France has said that it will begin using cellphone location tracking in the upcoming contact tracing challenge. Nearly 4 out of 5 South Koreans have told pollsters they would support such measures.

Apple and Google are co-operating on changes to their operating systems to make such tracing automatic. In Apple’s case it has said it would never sell or grant access to that data without specific individual permission. China is on another planet where privacy is concerned.

As we have learned in this awful battle we are going to be waging for many more months to come, early containment is far more effective than subsequent efforts to mitigate spread. And mitigation — physical distancing, hand washing, masks — is only as effective as testing and contact tracing can make it.

The arithmetic is horrific. If a victim can remain asymptomatic for five days, and therefore unknown and untested as a risk, they are likely to infect three to five other people in that brief period. The explosion of infection that one person can launch can mean several hundred new victims by week’s end. This week it emerged that there were probably thousands of unknown COVID-19 cases in New York state — in February!

We face excruciating trade-offs: health vs. economy. The hardest one is yet to come: ease lockdown with invasive contact tracing vs. more weeks of lockdown. Even here experts disagree.

Some say you need a combination of cellphone tracing, apps that can read an “infected person” message from a nearby cellphone, and GPS tracking devices on ankle or wrist for the infected. Others say that is way too far in privacy invasion. Traditionalists say we can contact trace with an army of volunteers making hundreds of phone calls to people the infected person remembers being near. Sadly, I would not trust my memory from two weeks ago, and anyway how do you find “the old woman with the funny hat” that I remember I got too close in the liquor store?

Come hot summer days, after months of forced isolation, the lockdown observance will start to decline — with or without permission. Even with a carefully phased and monitored easing the level of infection is likely to rise again. The only firewall is finding and treating the next wave’s victims a lot earlier and more effectively. It is hard to imagine that can happen without intensive testing and sharing of personal health data.

Three principles, among many, that Canadian privacy gurus like Dr. Chantal Bernier insist on are: demonstrate that there is no less invasive data collection method possible, ensure that the data collected with an individual’s grant of permission cannot be reused, ensure that the anonymized data self-destructs within 24-48 hours, unless legal permission is granted to hold longer. The ramifications in this highly sensitive domain for employers, public servants, families, and health researchers are too many to list.

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One overarching guideline must be transparency. Managing data privacy secretively will only generate resistance and severely damage the reputations of those who attempt to play it that way. The government had been planning a massive overhaul of Canadian privacy laws in this parliamentary session. Even when the House returns to something more like normal, they might be wise to consider starting the consultation process over again.

Perhaps the best guarantee of public trust remains Hippocrates, “Do no harm.”

RS Robin V. Sears is a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and was an NDP strategist for 20 years. He is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: is a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and was an NDP strategist for 20 years. He is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @robinvsears