Thank you to the other commenter for pointing out the banality of the "crime".
I am far less likely to initiate a serious crime in Canada than I am to be falsely accused of a serious crime. It is hard to fake exhaust data and saying "I saw him near the John St Starbucks at 9am with a gun" is fakeable just by following someone around. You don't need my Google data to prove it. It's on the CCTV cameras, it's on the cellphone towers my phone is pinging, etc.
I understand this makes people nervous, and I agree that there is something to be nervous about, but when I talk about the practical choice of recording your location data to a provider like Google I don't see much practical downside at the present time.
And that argument is much, much older than the digital age. If anything, extra tracking helps exonerate more than without it (false imprisonment, etc) https://time.com/wrongly-convicted/
When you are facing wrongful conviction, the assumption is that you are unable to present evidence in an effective manner anyway.
The reality is that data can be used to your benefit or against you. Having more of it doesn't shift the balance one way or another. It just means there's more opportunities to take it one way or the other.
Your times article also makes no mention of location tracking raising exoneration rates. It talks most prominently about how cheap faulty field drug tests contributed significantly to the improper convictions.
I'm also assuming here that you are actively looking to have your location logged -- something most people do not explicitly sign up for before it starts happening for them (usually after it has manifested results, people accept it as some weird fact-of-life).