Information & Ethics Committee on Sept. 27th, 2018

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith.

Next up for five minutes is Monsieur Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Massingham, at the start of the meeting, you talked about a software program created by your designers.

I understand that you are not a designer, but your company was targeting a certain market with that software.

What market was it directed to?

[Zackary Massingham]

Can you repeat the question, please? I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

At the start of the meeting today, you talked about a software program and said you did not design it yourself since you are not a designer. It was nonetheless intended for certain markets because you marketed it and received money for the services offered by this software. What was the target market for those services?

[Zackary Massingham]

Politics.

If I might ask, to which software are you referring? Most, if not everything, we do is custom development, “on spec” for a client. I'm just trying to answer as best I can.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Okay, we will get there.

Did you have more than one potential client for the services your company was offering? Was it for just one client or a wide range of clients around the world?

[Zackary Massingham]

We worked for a broad spectrum of clients, companies, and campaigns.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Whose intellectual property is the program that you used in your work?

[Zackary Massingham]

If, in a development contract, the person who came to us for the work wants the intellectual property, then it's theirs and they own all of that work. In other instances, we have some of our own tools that we license.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Okay.

Those tools have a patent and a license and are exclusive to the company that owns them.

[Zackary Massingham]

Correct.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Okay.

You said earlier that you are not aware of the source of the data you worked with, but do you know what data you needed? What kind of data was fed into the software tools that were available?

[Zackary Massingham]

It could be any source of data for SCL, or it could be none.

In SCL's case, which is what I think you're asking about, I believe they had multiple sources of data from any number of vendors that they packaged and then used within the software product we built for them.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Was the age of the general population on voters' lists of interest to you?

[Zackary Massingham]

Yes.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Did you have data showing that people aged 18 to 35 were likely to vote differently from those aged 55 to 80?

[Zackary Massingham]

If that's what the client is looking to see, some sort of score, then yes, I'm able to present it.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Was the age of the U.K. population available on voters' lists at the time of the Brexit vote?

[Zackary Massingham]

No, I don't believe so.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

So, if age groups were used, where does that data come from?

[Zackary Massingham]

I don't believe we tracked people by age. Facebook and other ad networks certainly would have reported on interaction, on what types of demographics were interacting with certain messages, and the campaigns would have used this information to make decisions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Monsieur Gourde.

We're out of time. Just to make the committee aware, I want to have about 10 or 15 minutes available for committee business at the very end of the meeting. Certainly if we still have questions we'll probably plow through that time and use it for questions, but I just want to let you know that this is the intent today. We have to discuss a few witnesses.

Mr. Baylis, are you okay to go? I was ragging the puck for a while.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thanks. I'm cocooning here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Go ahead for five minutes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Massingham, how many times did you go to the U.K. in 2015?