The Canadian government officially released COVID Alert, its exposure notification app, on Friday. Ontario is the first province to use it with plans to implement it in the Atlantic provinces and B.C. in the near future (other provinces may follow). I posted several tweets about the app, including one that received hundreds of likes and retweets indicating that I have installed it (the tweet included links to the Apple and Android versions of the app). Given the interest, this post expands on the tweet by explaining what the app does and doesn’t do and why I think the government has done a good job of addressing many associated concerns.
Archive for August 2nd, 2020

Law Bytes
Episode 278: Ben Waldman on Gander Social and the Challenges of Building a Sovereign Social Network
byMichael Geist

August 10, 2026
Michael Geist
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Michael Geist on Substack
Recent Posts
A Definition That Meets the Moment: Federal Government Recognizes Antisemitism Includes Anti-Zionism
Nobody Can Say They Weren’t Warned: Canada’s Threat Assessments Predicted the Belleville Yom Kippur Attack
An AI Transparency Act for Canada: My Submission to the Government’s AI Transparency Consultation
Not If, But When: The Yom Kippur Terror Attack in Belleville
A Canary’s Song: What Antisemitism Reveals About the Health of Canadian Democracy

