Information & Ethics Committee on April 24th, 2018

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You didn't ask BeLeave, “How did you get in touch with me? How did you know about me?”

[Jeff Silvester]

Well, they emailed us. We know how they got in touch with us.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

They emailed you, but how did they find your name? Did they do a Google search, and you came up first or second, or what happened?

[Jeff Silvester]

This was a campaign that was around, and so we knew they existed, but—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You knew they existed. How did they know you existed?

[Jeff Silvester]

I don't know. I can't speak to that.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

And you did not ask?

[Jeff Silvester]

No.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

And that wasn't of interest to you?

[Jeff Silvester]

In campaigns—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

That's fine.

And then they asked you to do exactly the same thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Mr. Baylis, you're past time.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Baylis.

Next up, for five minutes, Mr. Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank the two witnesses for being here.

It is interesting to hear that you offer specialized services for election campaigns, but I find it hard to understand why your clients use your company to do work that a permanent employee of a party or organization could do themselves, which is to place ads on Facebook.

What additional service do you offer to entice those clients to use your company? It is fairly easy to find people who can place ads on Facebook. I suspect that is not all they expect of you. Surely you must offer some additional service, some added value that accounts for your receiving contracts. What service is that?

[Jeff Silvester]

With respect to the work we do for the campaigns, we specialize in online advertising for politics. It's no different in any other industry. If you understand the industry a bit, it helps to make that process a bit more efficient, but it's really no different from any of us fixing a car. We also have owner's manuals for our cars, but we still bring them to mechanics, because they're the experts at it.

We help the campaigns to take their messages, craft them into size—in terms of how big they are, how much text there is. We use our experience in what sorts of things have worked in terms of layout in order to place them online.

The added value we bring, of course, is that we can do it very quickly and efficiently for them so they can get their information out there. Not all campaigns, and particularly those that aren't connected to a long-term political party, have that expertise in-house. The parties represented here have folks who can do that for them, but not everyone does.

They need help, and we're happy to provide that help.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Your services are all included. In other words, you place ads at the beginning of the campaign, you follow up on them, and you probably consider people's reaction, right up to the last day of the campaign when people go to vote.

Are you active throughout the process, from the start to the last day of the campaign?

[Jeff Silvester]

Depending on the clients, we can work with them to provide a political customer relationship management tool, and that is no different from what the Conservatives here have for their CIMS, or what's now C-Vote; or what the NDP have, NDP Vote or Populus. The Liberals used to use ManagElect. Now they use Liberalist, which is based on the American NGP VAN.

We sometimes provide a tool for campaigns to use, and then, yes, we'll support them through the use of that tool, through our advertising right through to voting day.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

You seem to be well informed about the computerized systems that the political parties use. If you have had access to those programs, is that because you have worked for a number of those parties?

[Jeff Silvester]

As you know, I've been involved in politics in Canada for a while. I used to work with a Liberal member of Parliament, and I've certainly volunteered on his campaigns. I've volunteered on campaigns of many parties, so I have seen different systems.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

So the expertise you acquired before you launched your company was developed through your work on federal or provincial election campaigns. You are now in the private sector and you use what you learned here or from political parties. So you are well aware of the personal information that your clients entrust you with.

In reality, it is a smoke screen to say that you do not have any databases because you use the ones your clients provide, and that some of them may include personal information about Canadians that should not be in there.

What do you do when they provide databases to you that may be questionable?

[Jeff Silvester]

When a client provides us information, it's typically for two purposes. The information they provide us might be information on the registered voters in their area. This is information that when all of you become registered candidates you get access to from Elections Canada. In the United States, they get it from their county or from their state. This is your basic contact information on who is registered.

When we get that information, if we're providing a political customer relationship management tool, we'll help them load that into that tool so they have a way of keeping track of who is deciding to vote for them or not. Customers might also provide us with an email list, for example, that they want help in loading into an email tool that we've created for them, or into the door-to-door tool, or into a phoning tool. That's how we use the information.

There are times, as well, that they might ask to use that information for reporting, in which case we will also provide those reporting services.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Monsieur Gourde.

Next up, for five minutes, Mr. Saini.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Good morning, gentlemen. I have just a quick question.

You said that you both started the company. What I'm assuming is that both of you went to a lawyer. You had articles of incorporation that were drawn up. In those articles of incorporation are both your names.

[Jeff Silvester]

Yes. We're the only two directors of the company.