Information & Ethics Committee on May 29th, 2018

[Christopher Wylie]

Honestly, I'm actually speechless that he said that. I honestly have no idea how to explain that. I think it's unfortunate because there's a lot of information that I think is really important for people, regulators, and legislatures to know about. They had every opportunity to participate in blowing the whistle, and they decided not to, so you'll have to ask him that. I find it absolutely shocking that he didn't know what Cambridge Analytica was, when it was AIQ's largest client.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Just so everybody knows, we're going to go into the next round right away.

There's possibly a time allocation vote that's going to happen within about 20 minutes, so just hang in there, Mr. Wylie. We're going to keep going as much as we can.

I don't know if you're okay. Do you need a health break or anything like that, Mr. Wylie?

[Christopher Wylie]

I'm okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

You're good to go.

Okay, we'll continue as scheduled with Mr. Picard for seven minutes.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Wylie, I'm going to pick up on a few points of interest from your remarks.

Why were these companies incorporated in Canada? Given the international clientele and the scope of the work, were AIQ and SCL incorporated in Canada for practical or regulatory reasons?

[Christopher Wylie]

It was simply because that's where Jeff Silvester and Zack Massingham lived and wanted to stay. They wanted to participate in SCL projects, but they had the temporal and geographic constraint of being in Canada rather than moving to the U.K., so the company accommodated that.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Now I'd like to turn to the data you collected or, rather, the data you worked on.

I'm going to draw an analogy. In cooking, you can be as creative as you want in coming up with all kinds of dishes. The real problem, however, is where the ingredients come from.

In this case, the detail we are missing is the source of the data you used for your analyses. Strictly speaking, when you work on something that is given to you, you do the job you're being paid for. I'd like to know whether you were responsible for acquiring the data or whether it was the responsibility of the people or companies you worked for?

[Christopher Wylie]

Sorry, when you refer to the source of the information, are you referring to the Kogan project? Is that what you're referring to?

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

You can provide a more general answer. The Kogan issue is rather specific.

When you want information from a variety of databases, you have to get it. It isn't simply available; you have to acquire it, so you need an agreement with the data provider.

The issue is multi-faceted. Does the owner of the data initiate the transmission of the data? Facebook, for instance, has datasets. Does it give you access to those data, either loaning or giving them to you? Does someone buy the data? Are the data obtained by hacking?

[Christopher Wylie]

This is not intended to be a difficult answer. It's just that it depends, really, on the project and the data source that you're talking about.

For example, the Facebook dataset was acquired by Aleksandr Kogan using apps from Facebook. Other datasets were acquired, some at the instigation of the owners of those datasets. For example, clients would sometimes provide the company with information, so they would help that modelling process.

In other cases there would be a contractual relationship directly with a company—a data vendor that sells consumer data, for example, or a company that sells its customer lists.

In other cases, subcontractors would be used to go and acquire data generally, depending on what they would go and find. For example, AggregateIQ was sometimes tasked with finding datasets for particular projects. They did that in Trinidad, for example. They went out and acquired data on behalf of the company.

Sometimes it's a contractual relationship directly with the data vendor. Sometimes it's an application that collects data. There are a lot of different ways you can collect data.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

In the case of Brexit, you seemed surprised by the fact that you were working on information that was relatively the same, regardless of the party in question.

Normally, it is someone looking to obtain power or hoping to control the group that will be in power who is interested in manipulating information for political gain or even manipulating a democratic process like an election. In the case of Brexit, I saw that there were contracts with people in the Caribbean, Africa, and the U.S., but it could apply in other cases as well.

Are you aware of foreign interests that would like to use this kind of technology to get their hands on power in certain countries?

[Christopher Wylie]

I'm aware of projects for which clients from one country would be interested in electoral results in another. To my understanding, SCL did participate in projects for which some of the funders would not be nationals or residents of the country that they were operating in.

For example, you have companies that might be interested in the natural resources of a particular country, and one government versus another may be more conducive to that.

I am aware of the company generally engaging with nationals of other countries for a project in a separate country.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Earlier, you distinguished between voter suppression and vote caging, which consists in removing people's names from the voter list.

To your knowledge, did AIQ, SCL, or other entities engage in the practice of taking people's names off the voter list?

[Christopher Wylie]

I'll be super-clear. When I'm talking about voter suppression, I'm not speaking about vote caging, or literally removing people from the electoral register. What I'm talking about is targeting particular groups of people with messages that will disengage, frustrate, or confuse them. That ultimately will, in some cases, inhibit or demotivate them enough to not participate in an election.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

What I was asking was whether you took part in vote caging.

[Christopher Wylie]

No.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Monsieur Picard.

Next up for seven minutes is Mr. Kent.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Wylie, in coming back to your associations with the Liberal Party of Canada, Braeden Caley, a Liberal Party spokesman, told Canadian Press in an email that the party did not contract you to do any work after staffers met with you in January 2016. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Trudeau, Chantal Gagnon, told CP in a separate email note, “Mr. Wylie did some preliminary work for the Liberal caucus research bureau, but ultimately it was decided not to move forward with his services”. What services were you paid for, for the $100,000 you received in January 2016? Were those services rendered before the 2015 election or in 2016?

[Christopher Wylie]

First of all, I haven't worked for the Liberal Party of Canada, the political party.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I understand; it was the research bureau.

[Christopher Wylie]

The research bureau at the time was looking for ways to optimize caucus communications, of responding better to constituents, constituent communications, and also providing the caucus with ongoing information as to, for example, what people are speaking about on Twitter. A lot of the work that I did in relation to the LRB was—and the word “preliminary” is appropriate because it was a new government at the time. They were just setting up the office, so they wanted help with whom they should be hiring; what they should be doing; how they should be collecting insight to inform caucus meetings when they're talking about issue x or issue y; and more broadly, how to optimize communications with constituents, for example, managing correspondence and things like that.

A lot of that was to help them, as they were setting up, as they were transitioning into government, and as they were hiring their staff. I didn't want to become a staff member. It wasn't necessarily something that I envisioned doing for a long time. The work that was done wasn't necessarily groundbreaking or anything. It was just to help the LRB during that transitioning process.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Do you think the Liberal research bureau is working on its own, without your continuing services, to develop psychographic micro-targeting in the next election?

[Christopher Wylie]

Again, to be clear, the work that was being done did not involve micro-targeting. The role of the LRB is not an election entity; it's to support the work of the caucus. The focus of the LRB is to look at policy issues to find out things like what people are talking about. If their next meeting is going to focus on northern affairs, they want to know what people talking about, what they think. That way you could have a more informed caucus discussion. You can do that either by hiring a lot of interns to go through and pull out examples of tweets and things that people care about, or you can do it programmatically, or you can hire somebody to build it programmatically.