Evidence of meeting #109 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was scl.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you very much.
Mr. Wylie, you mentioned the technical briefing that you gave to Mr. Cummings and the Brexit Leave campaign. Certainly, all Canadian political parties collect data, but we don't collect the sort of deep data that would allow what you describe: “With a deep understanding of underlying cognitive and dispositional processes, we can get to the heart of why people are driven towards almost any behaviour...”.
You talk about “personality psychometrics”—about vulnerabilities, really—of individual voters, who you say sometimes lie to themselves about what they want to do or the choices they want to make, but I think the most telling line is at the end of your briefing, where you say, “This is because we can trigger the underlying dispositional motivators that drive each psychographic audience.”
Again, you claim at the beginning of this technical briefing that you would engage your “multinational team that combines years of experience in micro-targeting and psychographic profiling in British, American, Canadian and international politics”. This comes back again to The Canadian Press, a reliable source of news in Canada, which reported earlier this year that an acquaintance of yours, off the record, not identified—
9:40 a.m.
As an Individual
It's hard for me to comment on somebody who claims to know me or what happens, if I don't have their name, if I don't know why they said that.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
As an Individual
Let's be clear. I don't know if they're an acquaintance or not.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Let me describe the situation and you may recall. This acquaintance said he or she had drinks with you in Ottawa in November 2015, a few weeks after the federal election, and the same acquaintance was quoted by Canadian Press as saying you were shopping your Facebook data-mining techniques in Ottawa with the Liberals and in Washington with the Republican Party and that you discussed with this acquaintance—
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
As an Individual
Let me be clear. That is not accurate. Let me be just super-clear right now. That is not accurate. I was not in the United States at that time pitching the Republican Party. I welcome you to ask the RNC if I was there doing that. It's just not true.
In terms of Facebook, I don't even know where to begin with this. When you are looking at underlying motivators of people, for example, that does not mean you have to do anything nefarious. For example, if people are more extroverted, they like things that have a higher audiovisual content in them, so you might want to send them something that is more flashy or more fun, compared to people who are more introverted who might want to read something more in-depth. They're conscientious, for example.
I would just caution people about twisting anything to do with data or anything to do with the underlying psychology of voters into something nefarious when it doesn't necessarily have to be.
To be clear, I didn't work for the Liberal Party. I haven't worked for the Liberal Party in I don't know how many years, but a long time, since before I moved to the U.K. The work I did for the LRB was simply helping them when they were transitioning—because this was the time that the government was just being set up—on looking at caucus communications, looking at basic metrics on things like Twitter, what people are talking about. There was nothing nefarious about that. To be clear, I haven't worked for the Liberal Party or any Canadian Liberal entity on psychographic targeting. Let me just be super-clear. Any insinuation that I have done that is just untrue. I have not worked on psychometric-based targeting for the Liberal Party or any Liberal entity.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
As an Individual
The reference you're making is to discussions that I was having about what could be done. My role—
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Just to be clear, you referred specifically to the in-depth technical briefing on psychographic micro-targeting and you also said, “Some of us will be in Ottawa this month working on a similar project for a major Canadian political party”. Were you misleading Mr. Cummings?
9:45 a.m.
As an Individual
No, let me be clear. I did not work on a project related to psychographic targeting for the Liberal Party—
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
May 29th, 2018 / 9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Good afternoon, I guess, to you, Mr. Wylie.
I have just a quick question. This is something regarding the testimony you gave last week and it was with Senator Whitehouse. It's an exchange you had with him. In response to a question from Senator Whitehouse last week about AIQ and SCL Group Canada, you stated, “There are subcontractors that were set up during the time that I was there to build out software infrastructure.” As I'm sure you know, they completely deny being set up in order to serve SCL or Cambridge Analytica.
Can you go through the process or give us an idea of what was undertaken to set them up, in as much detail as you can?
9:45 a.m.
As an Individual
My understanding is that AggregateIQ as a company was only very recently set up before the first contract it engaged in. That's something that could be checked, actually—when the company was actually set up—because before that point, Jeff Silvester and Zack Massingham were working in other companies. They left to form this company so they could then work on SCL-related projects. That perhaps is a question better placed to AggregateIQ, as they would have the company documents for that.
They started working under the auspices of AggregateIQ once they were offered substantial projects in the Caribbean, in Africa, and then later in the United States. The contractual arrangement that was made was that the intellectual property that they would be developing, which SCL was paying for, would be owned by SCL.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Just to touch on that point, AIQ was set up because you had an initial conversation with them about potential work. Prior to that, there was no AIQ. There were just two guys and they had no....
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
So AIQ was set up because you had that initial conversation with them and you said there was some work that you would like them to do, and you had the discussion about their coming to England. But as you stated, they had families and they had recently purchased a home so they would have preferred to work with your company solely, but to do it in Canada.
