Over 10,000 people were informed via a bug in the ArriveCAN app that they would need to voluntarily imprison themselves in a quarantine, prompting legal and human rights experts to call out the Trudeau government for violating their rights.
“It creates direct harm for people who are receiving this incorrect notification and following it,” said Thompson River University law professor Matt Malone.
“The government hasn’t provided sufficient transparency about why that happened. And there needs to be better accountability practices in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Teresa Scassa, the Canadian research chair in information law at the University of Ottawa, slammed the government for the application’s lack of transparency.
“I think it’s very troubling and I think it raises some important questions about government use of AI,” said Scassa.
“This is one of their flagship tools and there doesn’t seem to be any transparency or clear governance.”
The Conservative Party has urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end the program entirely, stating it has been a national disaster.
“People do not want to come, and the regulations are certainly redundant,” said Conservative transport critic Melissa Lantsman.
“These kinds of things say Canada is closed for business and when we have that coupled with a transportation network that just isn’t conducive to the potential in this area, we have a recipe for disaster.”
Despite calls from ever corner in Canada from politicians including from within the Liberals own party. medical professionals and Canadian citizens and residents, the Trudeau government decided in July it will go hardcore authoritarian and threatened Canadians if they do not use the so-called “temporary measures” ArriveCAN app they could be hit with thousands of dollars in fines.
During an emergency meeting of the House of Commons transport committee, voted for Omar Alghabra Liberal Minister of Transport to appear before the committee to answer for the giant wreck at Canada’s airport.
“We had committee testimony warning us that passenger traffic would surge this summer. We saw huge airport lineups at the beginning of April,” said Lantsman. “I think by this point, it’s unacceptable for the government to be taken by surprise or continue to tell Canadians that they are working on it.”
“It’s our view that the minister should address the critical issues facing our airports so that Canadians can understand that the government is doing anything (it can) to fix the mess and not simply waiting out the height of peak travel season in an effort to further abdicate their responsibility.”
At the end of July Canada’s Privacy commissioner announced it was investigating the Trudeau governments tracking software ArriveCAN following complaints about the collecting of personal information for travelers.
“Our office has received and is currently investigating a complaint that raises concerns with respect to the collection of personal information through ArriveCAN and subsequent use of that information,” said the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in an email dated July 27.
