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
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
I hope that when you referred to Mr. Saini's question saying that the app program for a U.S. client was for another U.S. client, both in the U.S., U.S. targets, I hope you weren't referring to the Johnny-Five app—
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
You were? You just said that the client's client was Ukrainian. Ukraine is a bit on the east side of the U.S., isn't it?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
This client of ours in the U.S. has three clients using it. Two are in the U.S., and one is in the Ukraine.
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
Johnny-Five has sub-files related to Cruz, which seems to relate to Ted Cruz, who's a senator in Texas.
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
This app seems to serve a Ukrainian company. The app program that you put together, therefore, is used by a Ukrainian company, using a third party in the U.S. with code written in Canada and aimed at Texas, because we have a bunch of files where we have Texas residents sorted by ethnic origin, —even under your name, you have test queries with this project.
Do I understand that this Ukrainian company asked for an app to survey or monitor or work on data that is, in fact, Americans in Texas?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
No. Each individual app is its own tool. We deployed it for our client, who by the way, is taking complete control over that in this next little while, but when they provide the app to their client, the client is limited to the information they get from their clients.
They ask their members to sign up or whatever it happens to be, and whatever information is provided by those individuals, only that particular organization, in this case the Osnova, has access to that. In the United States, you know the senatorial campaign or the gubernatorial campaign, they're the only ones who have access to theirs. The information is not shared between them.
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
No, but in the Johnny-Five files, there are sub-files linked to Cruz, suggesting that this data was working on Cruz-related data, Cruz being obviously Ted Cruz, the senator, and we do have files with Texas residents in the files we have.
My understanding is that, if it's not Ukrainian business, why the Ukrainian app, then, because it's the end product, sub-files that should be tested with Texas residents?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
The information that you're seeing is our code to create each individual tool. Every time we create it for a client, we make a new instance of that somewhere else with no information in it already. It's just a blank version of the app. That would have been created three different times, completely blank each time, and then the client would use that information.
The information that we have in the repository, however, might in some way relate to each of the clients so that if they ask us again to make a change to their app, we can make that change for them but it would still reflect what they have in their app. None of the information—
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
Empty or not, the name of the sub-file had Cruz written in it. It's not by lack of vocabulary.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
That wouldn't have been given to any other client except for Cruz.
Liberal
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
Johnny-Five is what we called our development project. When it's deployed for the client, it's called something completely different, and when we make the version of the app for them, it's completely fresh and clean, and empty. It only has the one user, who is the administrator from the campaign, and that's completely independent of any other campaign.
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
What are the names of the programs or projects that may aim at Canadian markets?
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
What are the names of the programs or projects—I have Monarch, Ephemeral? There are so many cases in there. What are the names of projects or initiatives where the program applied to or was aimed at Canadians?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
To Canadians? I believe we may have used Saga. Yes, we used Saga in Canada and we may have used Monarch as well.
Liberal
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
We were working with a political campaign in British Columbia. As part of that campaign, we helped them make their website, and their website would ask people to sign up to volunteer. We used the Monarch tool to put that information into their own voter database. They used NationBuilder. It would just take the information and put it over there.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
Other than that, we may have used it a couple more times in Canada in small campaigns, but we've not done a ton of work in Canada.
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
Chair, can we ask the witness and company to provide us with the detailed name of the program and project they used, which application, and Canadian data?
