Connected Care for Canadians Bill

Thank you for the question. I’d like to answer it in a more fulsome way, so I’ll take it back and let others talk about it, except that I think there are things in place already that may put your mind at ease. There may be something similar in Manitoba to that which is in New Brunswick. It is called Data MB, and it was originally set up by the federal government quite a long time ago. Its purpose is to protect data in a secure place and to enter into data-sharing agreements on specific topics. So if I were a researcher, for instance, I would have to provide a specific question, and I would only be given minimum access to the data that I absolutely needed to answer that question.

The data would, of course, be stripped ahead of time of all indicators. There is an identifier number given to each disaggregated piece, if you will, so that departments — for instance, within the New Brunswick government — are able to match up, not people, but identifiers. That’s as much as I know right now — that there are protections already built in. It is much like the cybersecurity question, which I will also pose to people who know more than me about what has been going on in these two domains.

I think that it’s something that needs to be thought through because even though my province has this institution that I think is pretty robust in terms of how it protects that type of information, I don’t have any idea across the country if there are like institutions that could weave together a secure way for Canadians to have their data used, if you will, in a way to promote innovation, research into health questions and so on.

Certainly, and there were a few sentences provided by the Department of Health around that, and there is attention being given to the sovereignty of both the data for Indigenous Peoples and indeed how their system is to work, because obviously we have many communities, all of whom have the right to manage their own community’s health care, and that data would be part of it. On the other hand, there is much to be gained by Indigenous communities from having a digital system that works well for them because they are often the ones who have to travel long distances, who don’t have all the —

Thank you, senator. The time allowed has expired.