Information & Ethics Committee on Dec. 11th, 2018

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Coming back again.... Ontario Proud was created in the run-up to an Ontario provincial election, but it was to fill a void in terms of social media activity, which you had observed by other players supporting other political parties.

[Ryan O'Connor]

Yes. I mean, there are different models. We did notice that certain parties and certain candidates were getting support from individuals, be they Canadian third parties, foreign-funded third parties or what have you, but there was a void for what we saw as our message. There was a void both in terms of using social media effectively to reach Ontarians and other Canadians, and in terms of the messages we were concerned about, with respect to government transparency, lower taxes and personal freedom.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Going forward, has your focus shifted to federal politics, or will you remain in the provincial domain?

[Ryan O'Connor]

We do run a lot of content that relates to federal politics. As I indicated in our opening remarks, Mr. Kent, we do intend to register as a national third party organization, when required to do so, for the upcoming national election.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Would you operate solely within the province of Ontario, or would you perhaps...? Obviously, social media knows no borders or boundaries, but would your content be broadened deliberately to national dimensions?

[Ryan O'Connor]

We're still determining internally what the most appropriate structure is. We expect it will be a separate entity that we'll then register. That entity will be the one ultimately running third party political ads for the upcoming election. That's not something we've made a final decision on, whether it's a new manifestation of Ontario Proud or one of the other pages becoming a national page.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

You have another minute. No? Okay.

We'll go over to Mr. Erskine-Smith for five, and then to Mr. Angus for five after that.

Go ahead.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

I just want to close off on PIPEDA. You said you follow the spirit of PIPEDA, but you acknowledge that you're not obligated to follow the actual rules within PIPEDA.

[Ryan O'Connor]

Yes. If this committee has any concerns—and I know it does with respect to data breaches and privacy—we're certainly open to being regulated by privacy legislation—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That's—

[Ryan O'Connor]

If you see a lacuna there, Mr. Erskine-Smith—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Well, that's my principal point. We've made a recommendation whereby something that is manifestly hate speech, harassment or disinformation should be subject to a quick takedown. I think there are concerns with respect to free speech beyond that—and rightfully so.

However, when it comes to data protection and the importance of consent as an operating principle, I think third party political actors like Ontario Proud should absolutely be subject to those rules. I am concerned when I see that hundreds of thousands of Canadians have their information held by Ontario Proud, and then Ontario Proud makes millions of phone calls and sends text messages and collects more information. There are no data protection or privacy rules that apply to Ontario Proud. It's nice that you're following the spirit of the rules, whatever that means, but I think the rules should actually apply.

The 2.5 million phone numbers and the million text messages.... How are those individuals selected?

[Ryan O'Connor]

I can't speak to the process by which they were selected, Mr. Erskine-Smith. Again, that's something the vendor would have decided on.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

So you would say to the vendor, “We're going to pay you a significant amount of money to make phone calls and send text messages, but you pick the people.” That's not how I would do it. I'd give my vendor specific people to contact, either to get my voters out to vote, or, within my riding, to assess what their voting intention might be, if I want to put a poll into the field, which I have not done but I could do.

How do you decide? Do you say, whatever numbers you choose, Mr. Undisclosed Vendor?

[Ryan O'Connor]

That was pretty much the case, yes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Of what value is that? You said there were 2.5 million phone calls and a million text messages, and you spent a significant sum of money.

Why did you spend the money? What was the purpose of that?

[Ryan O'Connor]

It was to see where the electorate was in terms of whether the polling was an accurate reflection of what was going on on the ground. We were interested in it. We wanted to motivate voters who were concerned about the issues that Ontario Proud considered—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

How did you motivate the voters? The text messages and phone calls that I saw were “How do you plan to vote?” Was it about voter engagement as well, to say, “Get out and vote”? Was there a follow-up campaign to that?

[Ryan O'Connor]

Yes. Ultimately, it was voter identification to a certain degree.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay. So you were running simultaneously a voter engagement, get-out-the-vote campaign and a campaign to defeat Kathleen Wynne, and in some cases maybe the NDP. I don't know if you were out to defeat the NDP or just say nasty things about the NDP on the Ontario Proud Facebook page.

Are we clear that the vendor obtained consent from these millions of Ontarians to have the third party undisclosed vendor contact them on behalf of Ontario Proud or to have Ontario Proud contact them?

[Ryan O'Connor]

The vendor assured us that it complied with any relevant privacy legislation that would apply to its work, as well as CASL.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay.

This is my understanding, but correct me if I'm wrong: Ontario Proud uses NationBuilder as its database.

[Ryan O'Connor]

That's correct, one of its databases.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

In that database, you would have an individual. Their Facebook ID would be in there; their email would be in there, presumably, and their phone number would be in there. How many people are in the database?