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 274: Mark Musselman on What Stakeholders Really Think About the Government’s Reversal of the CRTC Online Streaming Act Decision
byMichael Geist

June 22, 2026
Michael Geist
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Recent Posts
Shaky Ground Gets Shakier: What the U.S. Supreme Court’s Location Data Decision Means for Bill C-22
The Two Weeks That Reshaped Canada’s Digital Policy
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 274: Mark Musselman on What Stakeholders Really Think About the Government’s Reversal of the CRTC Online Streaming Act Decision
Improv Policy: The Government Doesn’t Know What To Do About Its Online Streaming Act Mess
Soft Ban or Hard Verification Requirement?: Why Bill C-34’s Social Media Ban Exemption Gets the Incentives Wrong and Comes Too Late to Matter

