Evidence of meeting #113 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 know.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
Which statement is that? Is it the one about not being under the jurisdiction?
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I'll repeat it again. You're “not subject to the jurisdiction”. Why did you make that statement about whether it's legal or not? You're not subject to their jurisdiction, so why do you make that statement?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
You're talking about something that's criminal, and that's a very different allegation.
Liberal
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
Yes, it is my word, and I have explained that clearly.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith
We are, unfortunately, out of time on that line of questioning.
We have three minutes, Mr. Angus.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Massingham did not testify at the U.K. committee, correct?
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
And he's not here today.
The last time you were here, you stated, “We saw no evidence of any coordination between the two [campaigns in the U.K.]”, and yet we have the BeLeave hard drive folder. Your colleague, Zack Massingham, who is not here, is in this folder, along with the senior representatives of the Vote Leave staff. He would have seen that there was coordination because they were in the BeLeave folder. Were you aware that Mr. Massingham had that knowledge?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
When you say he was aware that they were in the folder, what I think you're talking about is the permissions concerning who could access the folder.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
When you click on a link, you don't get to see who has access to it. You just see the files that are there.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
So he wouldn't know that within the folder.... You guys are tech gurus. You're getting paid to—
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
Right, but we weren't administrators.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Would you not be aware that the Vote Leave people were in the BeLeave folder?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
I don't know whether you've used tools such as Dropbox or anything like that before, but when you click a link, it opens up the folder and shows you the files that you as an individual have access to. That's all Mr. Massingham would have seen when he clicked on that link.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Was he never aware? Shahmir Sanni, who was the face of BeLeave, has come out as a whistle-blower and said that it was a front and that it was illegal. Mark Gettleson, who was one of the coordinators of Vote Leave, has come out and said that what they did was coordinated and illegal. Your colleague, who's not here, was in the same Google drive with the key people on Vote Leave, which would have suggested a coordination. He's talking about getting money. He's not here to answer that.
Given what you know now, would you say that if you knew what Mr. Massingham knew, you might have thought that what you were doing was illegal?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
You've made a number of statements there that we've talked about already, concerning which I've described exactly how it happened.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Yes, it's just that the key people on the campaign have come out and said this was coordinated, and the coordination link is AggregateIQ, because you're the one placing the ads.
There's a pro forma constitution to set up a committee. That was in the Google drive. Were you aware of that as well?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
No. Well, we've seen some media reports of it now, but were not aware at the time.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
You get 600K in the final 10 days. Mr. Massingham, who is not here to answer this, is talking about where to get the money from, and it's going to come from Vote Leave.
I don't want to keep circling around and around, because Mr. Massingham could probably give us a nice clear explanation, but don't you think the question of its being illegal became very obvious to many people—everyone, it seems, except AggregateIQ?
Then we go back to Mr. Wylie, who said that you laughed and said that yes, of course it was totally illegal.
You're protected by parliamentary privilege here, Mr. Silvester. Why don't you just tell us: given all you've seen, don't you think there's an obvious impression that this could have been illegal and that AggregateIQ could have been the connecting link?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
With respect to parliamentary privilege, I also swore an oath and in my testimony the last time I was here I also behaved as if I had. I can only tell you the truth, and when we were working with BeLeave, we had no indication and saw no evidence that there was any coordination.
With respect to other information that has come out now, all of that information and more has been given to the Electoral Commission in the U.K.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
When Facebook wrote to the U.K. committee, they said, contrary to your testimony:
Our investigations to date have found there was one data file custom audience, one website custom audience, and one lookalike audience that were used to select targeting criteria for potential ads during this period by both the Vote Leave and BeLeave pages
Don't you think, if Facebook says the same datasets were being used on both campaigns, that it goes back to AggregateIQ's having used them?