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 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith.
Next up for seven minutes is Mr. Kent.
9 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's good that you could be with us here today, Mr. Wylie. You are certainly a whistle-blower of some note, and your comments a couple of months ago, saying “It is extremely uncomfortable to consider that our democracy may have been corrupted”, have resonated and sparked investigations like that of our committee today. I would also note that over the years you have been a participant—an architect, if you will—of the dark art of psychographic micro-targeting and, I think, in some ways comparable to the arsonist who sets the blaze and then calls the fire department.
On January 2, 2016, you sent an email to Mr. Cummings, who you had briefed on the Leave project—the Brexit vote, the referendum in the U.K.—and followed up asking for an early meeting to consider the proposal you made, again, as you said, your in-depth technical briefing on psychographic micro-targeting. However, you also said in that email to Mr. Cummings, “Some of us will be in Ottawa this month”—January 2016—“working on a similar project for a major Canadian political party.” We know now that this was the Liberal Party of Canada, and I'll come back to that later on in my questions over the next couple of hours.
I'd like to go back a decade, though, and just establish a little bit of ground information. Is it correct that you worked in the office of the Liberal leader under Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff between 2007 and 2009 and launched a project that was described as “information management”?
9 a.m.
As an Individual
I worked for the office of the Leader of the Opposition, and my role in the time frame you mentioned was to look at ways of using information technologies to better engage and communicate with constituents and manage constituent information.
9 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Is it true, then, that your contract was cancelled at the direction of leader Ignatieff because he considered your work to be too invasive of Canadians' privacy?
9 a.m.
As an Individual
That is news to me. If that happened, I never heard about it. I don't believe that's true.
9 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Well, The Canadian Press quoted a Liberal insider, saying that you were “pushing a fledgling form of...data-harvesting” techniques, but Liberal officials then backed off because they didn't want to have anything to do with what they considered to be potentially too invasive.
9 a.m.
As an Individual
I don't know who this Liberal insider is, so it's hard for me to comment on what exactly they're referring to.
When I worked with the opposition leader's office, the project was primarily infrastructural. At the time, the opposition caucus did not have a coherent constituency casework management system. I think that managing casework is a legitimate activity for members of Parliament and the Leader of the Opposition to engage in, and I think that creating technological infrastructure to help them respond to the constituents more promptly is a perfectly legitimate exercise to engage in.
To the point you made, to my recollection, I was never terminated because of some kind of privacy issue. I'm not sure where you're getting that information, but I don't believe it's true.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
In this case it was from The Canadian Press, but The Globe and Mail reported that as “a Liberal volunteer and researcher” you “played a role in introducing and shaping the party's drive toward data-driven techniques.” This gentleman—again, this volunteer—said that you were using “fringe techniques”, using
a now widely used piece of software, known as “Liberalist”—while aggressively avowing to the party's old guard that only technology could reverse the [Liberal] party's electoral fortunes.
Did you advise the Liberal Party?
9:05 a.m.
As an Individual
“Liberalist” is just a brand name for the CRM technology that was being developed. The thing that I would say is that just because data....
One thing that I would just caution, for anyone looking at this issue, is that the use of information in and of itself is not inherently nefarious. Every party in Canada uses a CRM system. Every party collects data. At the time, the Conservative Party had much more advanced technology and data collection infrastructure than the Liberal Party. In order to keep up with the modernization of politics, one thing that the Liberal Party at the time prioritized was setting up a CRM system to manage relationships with voters and, on the caucus side, to manage relationships with constituents. That in itself is not nefarious. That in itself is not illegal or unethical. Every party collects the electoral register in Canada and collects information on constituents or voters.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Absolutely, every party does collect data. It's a matter of how much data they collect and how they use it.
Let's come back to this email that you sent at the time you were pitching the Leave vote psychographic micro-targeting. You wrote, “Some of us will be in Ottawa this month working on a similar project for a major Canadian political party”. Were you pitching, basically, this same approach to the Liberal Party of Canada in January 2016?
9:05 a.m.
As an Individual
Let me be clear. First of all, if you read through the documentation that was sent to Dominic Cummings, nothing in there is illegal, and nothing in there is necessarily comparable to, for example, Cambridge Analytica. There was no proposal to misappropriate data.
If you collect data with awareness and consent, then that is a legitimate use and collection of data. The thing that I would just caution, again, is that simply because data is involved in a project does not mean that there is any nefarious intent or purpose for that project.
With relation to the—
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you.
We'll come back.
Next up for seven minutes is Mr. Angus.
9:05 a.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you, Mr. Wylie, for joining our committee today.
I'm very interested in the structure of SCL. We're trying to figure out SCL, Cambridge Analytica, and AggregateIQ. When I look at SCL, I see that it was involved in psychological warfare, rumour campaigns.... It was paid by NATO. It was working around the world. Then it seems to have morphed into this election machine. Can you explain the structure of SCL to us?
9:10 a.m.
As an Individual
Sure. I believe that, in fact, some of the work that SCL was doing for NATO was actually funded by the Canadian government. Something that the committee might be interested in looking at with the Department of Defence in Ottawa is the relationship there.
In terms of the structure of SCL, it has had several iterations over time. When I was there, it was considered a group company where you had the same shareholders and board members on several different companies, which shared the same name, SCL, and then each of the companies within the group company specialized in a different area of work. The largest at the time I joined was SCL defence, so the majority of the work that SCL Group did was defence related. You also had SCL Elections, which was a much smaller consultancy that did elections work, usually in developing countries. SCL Social did work that usually didn't fit into either defence or politics. For example, if you had a health care project, that might be SCL Social. As well, SCL Commercial did commercial projects.
When Cambridge Analytica was set up, the formal relationship that it had when the intellectual property was transferred was from SCL Elections to Cambridge Analytica, so Cambridge Analytica was set up in the United States. It acquired not SCL Elections itself, but merely the intellectual property of SCL Elections, so SCL Elections assigned its IP to Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica, in return, provided a licence to that same intellectual property back to SCL Elections with a second contract that guaranteed that all work from Cambridge Analytica would be performed by SCL Elections. That was the basic set-up.
I can go into more detail if you'd like, but that's—
9:10 a.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Well, we will get there.
Brittany Kaiser testified that AggregateIQ was the exclusive digital data engineering partner of Cambridge Analytica.
9:10 a.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Chris Vickery also stated that they were the digital development team.
How does AggregateIQ fit in here?
9:10 a.m.
As an Individual
Around the end of October or November 2013, when SCL decided to scale and prioritize development of technology solutions, I reached out to Jeff Silvester and Zack Massingham and asked if they were interested in coming and working on projects in London. Because they had new families and they were already established in Canada, it was difficult for them to move.
The arrangement was that they would set up a Canadian company. They would be able to work in Canada. The front-facing brand would still be SCL, or SCL Canada, but they were able to remain in Canada as they worked.
AggregateIQ was set up. The first project they worked on was Trinidad. The arrangement they had with SCL was that any work that they performed for SCL would then be owned by SCL. The intellectual property that was being developed at the time was then assigned or transferred to SCL. You could think of AggregateIQ as a bit like a franchise, if you will.
9:10 a.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Okay. We have the documents, which I think were probably supplied by you, that SCL identifies Zack Massingham as head of SCL Canada.
9:10 a.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
There is a phone that goes to Zack Massingham as the head of SCL Canada. He said there is absolutely no connection.
Is that credible?
9:10 a.m.
As an Individual
No, that's completely false.
The reason AggregateIQ was set up in the first place was because there were projects that SCL was running, and then later Cambridge Analytica was running, that they needed a team of engineers to support. The arrangement was that AggregateIQ would perform that work and then exclusively license it to SCL, and then operate under the auspices of SCL Canada.
9:15 a.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Why would Zack Massingham tell our committee such an obvious falsehood when there are documents? That's what we don't understand.
9:15 a.m.
As an Individual
I can't speak to the intentions or reasons why Zack Massingham would—
9:15 a.m.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I'm sorry to interrupt. You have said that they've been very careful, technically correct in what they say, but that they use “weasel words”. Why would you say that?