Evidence of meeting #123 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 elections.
A video is available from Parliament.
Noon
Conservative
Noon
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
Thank you.
First of all, the exercise you're doing will hopefully put trust back in our population, not just us. Our job is quite a victim of cynicism, but we need ways to make sure that people can trust our institution, if that's the exercise you're fulfilling.
My concern is about working with third parties. Do you sell your data to third parties?
Noon
Constitutional and Legal Adviser, National Board of Directors, Liberal Party of Canada
Absolutely not.
Noon
Privacy Officer and Director of Membership, Conservative Party of Canada
Absolutely not.
Noon
Constitutional and Legal Adviser, National Board of Directors, Liberal Party of Canada
Absolutely not.
Noon
Privacy Officer and Director of Membership, Conservative Party of Canada
Absolutely not.
Noon
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
Are you saying all the data we're working on in each of your respective organizations stays within the organization and any third parties that may want to access the data.... How do they proceed if they want to access your data? With research centres, academics and foundations that are supportive of your lines of policy, how do you manage dealing with third parties, then?
Noon
Privacy Officer and Director of Membership, Conservative Party of Canada
We certainly are approached by third parties for that sort of thing from time to time. Our specific policy covers sharing, for our purposes, federally, as well as the local campaign level nominees. We recently had a leadership race and they were covered by that as well. Those are the only separate organizations—and of course they fall under the umbrella of the Conservative Party of Canada—that we share our information with.
Noon
Constitutional and Legal Adviser, National Board of Directors, Liberal Party of Canada
Other than sharing within the party itself with our provincial and territorial boards, not the provincial party, the Ontario Liberal Party, or what have you, but our provincial territorial boards, which are part of our national organization, and at the riding level, we don't share our information with anyone.
The only exception to that would be in circumstances where we have engaged a third party supplier. In those circumstances we ensure that there are contractual provisions in place in order to protect the use of that data. It's not selling it. It's not renting it. It's using it in order to engage Canadians through a phone bank, or what have you, in order to communicate with them.
Noon
Director of Operations, New Democratic Party
We also do not sell, rent or share our data with third party organizations. From time to time we contract with third party providers to do the work of the registered political party. We ensure that the contracts that we have with them include strict contractual obligations to protect the confidentiality of the information that they might have access to and that they agree to fall under any of the privacy provisions that folks working within the party also have to fall under.
Noon
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
But the possibility remains that when we work with third parties as soon as they have their hands on data for the purpose of the agreement they have with you, we tend to lose control over what they do with the data, or is that...?
Noon
Director of Operations, New Democratic Party
At least for us the protocols in place when that happens are very strict.
If a third party contractor requires information of ours to do the job that we contracted them to do, they might have access on a read-only basis but they don't have the ability to, say, download the information, copy the information or take it off premises. Certainly, we think long and hard before we engage someone from the outside to help us with our work. Once we do make that decision, we ensure that strict policies are in place and that legal and contractual obligations are instituted before anything happens.
Noon
Liberal
Michel Picard Liberal Montarville, QC
By the way, in your presentation, you mentioned that you created your system or updated your system recently. What was the upgrade about? Was it about policies or data protection, and what triggered that?
Noon
Director of Operations, New Democratic Party
We are in the process of moving our IT systems to the cloud. We're moving away from the holding of information on the premises and moving it into the cloud. I'm not an IT professional, so I can't get into the specifics, but it's my understanding that, here in the 21st century, it is standard practice to increase security and increase a whole bunch of other operational abilities, one of them being the security of the data. That's the process that's ongoing right now.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you, Chair.
During the study of the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-AggregateIQ scandal, we have heard repeated recommendations from academics, from IT experts and from social media security experts that, on the basis of what happened in the Brexit referendum, where confected third parties controlled and targeted advertising buys on social media—and the same thing in the United States—there was a common recommendation that a political registry of advertising buys be set up so that one could see transparently what ads were purchased by the political parties or by third parties and how they were targeted.
I wonder if each of you could comment on what your party position might be towards that sort of registry, to show how your advertising buys in the writ period or perhaps even the pre-writ period of a campaign would be applied.
12:05 p.m.
Privacy Officer and Director of Membership, Conservative Party of Canada
We can start on that, if that's all right.
Absolutely. We share the same concerns about third party involvement in the election—this past election and those upcoming. If there were to be some increased requirement for us to fully register all ad purchases across all channels so that they could be investigated on an individual level.... Of course, we are required to list all election expenses and we are currently complying with that requirement, but if what is required to clean up the election is to get to the individualized level, then I think that's something that we would be in favour of if it comes forward from Parliament.
12:05 p.m.
Constitutional and Legal Adviser, National Board of Directors, Liberal Party of Canada
As well, obviously, Canadians have the right to expect an election that's not interfered with by third parties. If that is a measure that goes some way towards addressing those concerns, then it would be one that certainly should be considered.
As I understand it—and I may be mistaken because I appreciate that all of you are much more expert in this issue than I am—if Bill C-76 is passed into law, it will contain some measures with respect to Facebook ads and other matters. Many of these issues may be addressed by that legislation, and we welcome that.
12:05 p.m.
Director of Operations, New Democratic Party
I think that generally the New Democratic Party has and will continue to stand up for more open and more transparent elections. As I've said, we do think that a political party should be brought into the PIPEDA framework, and I think that any measure that increases transparency increases the confidence that Canadians have that political parties are all playing by the same rules.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
One of the loopholes that wasn't addressed or is not being addressed by Bill C-76 is the fact that charitable American dollars that might have a political objective in determining, supporting or affecting a Canadian election can be effectively converted into Canadian dollars by being transferred from that American charitable group to the Canadian charity, which can then distribute them to third parties to be used in election campaigns. The witness who most effectively made this point, Vivian Krause said that it's easy for any individual political party to say that they take the high road in a political campaign if a third party is throwing the mud and making the political accusations on the campaign trail.
I wonder if any of your parties would encourage the government to more effectively enable the CRA to respond to Elections Canada's unknowns about how these foreign charitable dollars are getting into the Canadian election process.
