Hon. Colin Deacon: Senator Gold, the launch of the Government of Canada’s COVID Alert app was a missed opportunity in the earlier stages of the pandemic and ultimately failed due to a very low adoption rate. It is estimated that only 17% of Canadians downloaded the app, of which only half of those were estimated to be active at the peak. Senators Moodie, Dasko and I conducted a survey that found that five times that many, or 80% of Canadians, wanted to use their mobile device data to notify others they had been close to if they tested positive for COVID-19.

The app is now in a zombie state between the low adoption rate and the fact that it is now useless given it requires a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test confirmation to input the positive case data.

Does the government have a plan to retire this application and, importantly, conduct a post-mortem? Can you speak to why Canada had such low download and adoption rates compared to, for example, New Zealand at 60%?

I can’t understand why there was no plan to use partnerships with businesses that could benefit from the app to encourage its use, for example, airlines. Can you speak to that please?