Information & Ethics Committee on May 3rd, 2018

[Damian Collins]

Yes, I do. We're in a similar position with Alexander Nix. We want him to come back, because we believe there are serious questions about the honesty of his testimony to the committee, and we want to challenge him on that.

I watched the session that you had with AIQ. Obviously, my dark concern there was with the answers they gave about their co-operation with the Information Commissioner. I think they were completely disingenuous. It's quite clear from the Information Commissioner that they may have responded to letters, but they're not co-operating with her investigation, and are still not. I think it was misleading of them to try to insinuate to your committee that they were.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Next up is Mr. Erskine-Smith for seven minutes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

While we're on the topic of information commissioners, your information commissioner has significant powers. Ours has very modest powers when it comes to compelling testimony and the production of documents, and certainly can't issue fines or make orders in the same way.

How important do you think it is for an information commissioner in the modern age to have significant new powers to address some of the concerns we've seen with Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and SCL?

[Damian Collins]

I think it's really important that that they have the ability, not just to request documents and information, but to go and take them if the company refuses to provide them. The powers to fine should be significant.

I think we should also discuss whether it should go beyond that, as well. If you're a very wealthy individual like Robert Mercer, you might think that, if the only risk in certain countries is that someone might get a minor fine for a breach in data protection law, you are happy to pay those fines. You will price that into the cost of doing work. Very wealthy people can afford to take those risks. Therefore, it's right that, in national territories, our agencies have the power to find the truth, get the information, know what's going on, and then have the powers to take significant action against companies who are in breach of the law.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

A number of my colleagues have asked about Brexit.

I found it incredibly interesting that Mr. Massingham indicated that he knew at the time that, had the £625,000 come from Vote Leave on behalf of Vote Leave, there would have been an election finance violation at that time.

Did you know that beforehand?

[Damian Collins]

If that had been paid by Vote Leave?

Yes, that—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Yes, there was knowledge amongst the players at the time that, had this happened—paid by Vote Leave as Vote Leave—there would have been an election finance law violation.

I didn't know that we would get an answer from AIQ, that they would confirm they were aware of that at the time.

[Damian Collins]

I was surprised by that, too. I thought it was one of the most interesting and significant moments in that testimony. To me, it seems to be a pretty clear violation.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

We've touched on this a little bit. When it comes to a referendum like Brexit, and it's such a close but significant outcome for the country, and if there have been election finance violations that have had an impact on the outcome, it seems to me there would be strong grounds for that referendum to be set aside based on the unwritten principles of your constitution.

What do you think about that?

[Damian Collins]

At this moment in time, I think people need to see it laid out in front of them. They need to see the proof and the evidence of what took place, the scale of it, and how many people that may have impacted upon directly. That would then inform a debate about what we should do about it, and the consequences that are clearly greater than just taking action against individuals for breaking the law.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Of course.

When it comes to co-operation with AIQ, you mentioned that AIQ continues to refuse to co-operate with your Information Commissioner. They've indicated some willingness to attend before your committee, but nothing is confirmed. Given just timing, I mean AIQ is the Canadian player over which we have jurisdiction. You've heard from witnesses who certainly are going to refuse to attend before us, from Kogan to Nix, and hopefully, you get Zuckerberg, but I'm not sure. However, AIQ is the company under our jurisdiction. Do you think it's imperative in terms of timing; at what point should we have them back in your view; and is there anything else we can do to further your investigation, given the timeline where you say you want to conclude this before the summer recess?

[Damian Collins]

I think you've got strong grounds to call AIQ back in your own right, obviously, because of the concerns about the testimony they gave. I had hoped we would be able to agree to hear them very soon. I hope that we'd be in a position to announce that next week and they would give evidence to us before the end of this month. That's certainly something we'd like to see happen.

Certainly we're in a position when interviewing witnesses who may not otherwise be able to come to your committee, and there are questions or issues you'd like us to cover off on your behalf, to do so. We'd certainly be very happy to do that.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay. I would appreciate that.

When we had Mr. Vickery before us, he indicated that when he had reviewed the dataset, it was likely that this overlapping and sort of master dataset comprised election lists. He even suggested it had some commercial information from the Koch brothers. He suggested it had the information from Cambridge Analytica and the Facebook breach, and potentially others. He said that this information had certainly been used for election purposes, but he also said it might have been used for commercial purposes as well. I wonder if you have gone down this road in your inquiry. Do you know more than we do whether such information has been used for commercial purposes?

[Damian Collins]

We know that he said there were links in the dataset to advertising networks that would therefore be engaged in commercial work. The way he describes the way the dataset is collected, it would certainly have that application. You effectively have a store of information about people that's linked to their profiles. You can add other information to that, which may be more specific to political campaigns, but that information is still going to be very useful for commercial campaigns as well. Also, he sees these datasets as kind of almost living organisms to which you're constantly adding new data information, and you can just call up information and create new datasets and new audience groups out of this market set, whenever you want.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Yes, and the idea that you would collect information for political purposes and use it for commercial purposes is certainly against our law, and I expect against your law as well.

[Damian Collins]

Indeed.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

When it comes to transparency rules in targeting and advertising, and you mentioned this a few times, when it comes to co-operation, certainly we can co-operate on the inquiry itself in terms of getting at the right questions for the right players, and if we've got jurisdiction over certain individuals, we can assist in your inquiry. However, when it comes to the outcomes and the recommendations, do you think there is value in having consistency in rules across jurisdictions, especially when it comes to the transparency of advertising in elections?

[Damian Collins]

Yes, I do. There obviously will be different countries that have different rules in place, but I certainly think that rules on transparency would be much effective if they could be enforced across the board. I think there are the same or similar rules in all countries relating to how they use services like Facebook. I see no reason why that shouldn't be the case.

You brought up the case of Germany. That is quite a good example because there may be very specific national reasons why certain rules are in place, and those conditions may not apply in the same way in other countries. But I think some of these basic points about transparency should apply globally.

It's my concern as well about whether there should be political advertising in the newsfeed or on Facebook, or if there is, whether people should have the right to turn it off. I think it's an important point, and that's really about the way the platform works as a whole rather than individual countries.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I appreciate that, and I look forward to co-operating as we go forward.

[Damian Collins]

Absolutely. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith.

Mr. Kent.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I just have one last question going to the point of Facebook's acknowledgement of having allowed serious privacy breaches. Here I'm referring to Mr. Zuckerberg's apology before congressional committees. When Facebook executives appeared before our committee, they assured us that thousands of employees monitored Facebook looking for disinformation and fake news, and that many thousands more would be hired to address the realities that have been discovered through the Cambridge Analytica scandal, AIQ, and so forth.

However, we reminded Facebook that some Russian disinformation posted a year ago, regarding Canadian troops participating in NATO Operation Reassurance in the Baltic countries was ridiculous. One of the postings suggested to Latvians that Canadian troops would be encouraging homosexuality in the Latvian population. Another said that our Muslim defence minister would be leading a Muslim takeover of Latvia. When I offered to the Canadian CEO of Facebook that those postings were still up and very open and known to folks in Latvia as well to Canadians who might be following Latvian affairs, he expressed surprise and asked for the link to assist Facebook in taking it down.

Have any similar occasions of glaring disinformation come before your committee during your inquiry?

[Damian Collins]

I think we have a similar area of concern, which is that when complaints are made to Facebook about content on their site that is misleading or wrong or that might be harmful, the company doesn't always take it down at all, or quickly enough. That would suggest to me that they don't have the resources in place to do that effectively. That is clearly a ground for concern for the future.

I think, as well, that they should not only act more quickly on user referral but also use the tools they have to try to identify for themselves whether content is likely to be problematic or open to challenge, and then investigate it themselves and take it down. We know they can track what users do on and off the site and whom they are engaging with and what they are doing. They do that, they say, for security reasons. I think they could use those techniques to identify the sources of disinformation.

When they are talking about news and fake news, I think they are right about having more transparency over who has posted this information, where they are based, who they are. With political advertising, you have to do that from a page where you verify your location and your identity as part of setting up that page to place ads. I think they are looking to change some of their policies in a way that would be helpful.

But for me this is where you then come back to the question about liability. If we say “We want you to act in this way”, and you don't do it, is there a liability in law that can be enforced against them for not doing it?

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you.