Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the committee for inviting me here today to speak to you about your committee's review of the Cambridge Analytica affair and the privacy implications of the use of digital information in Canadian political campaigns.
As the chair said, my name is Ryan O'Connor, and I'm the lawyer for and also one of the founding directors of Ontario Proud.
Ontario Proud, for those who don't know, is a social media-based, online, predominantly not-for-profit advocacy group that promotes government ethics, personal freedom, fair taxes, fiscal probity and Canadian culture. It was started as a Facebook page in February 2016, and has now grown to over 425,000 supporters on Facebook, with approximately 100,000 email subscribers. In addition to Facebook, Ontario Proud operates several online properties, including on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
Millions in Ontario and throughout Canada have viewed Ontario Proud's content online, and do so regularly, to the point where Ontario Proud is one of the most engaged pages in Canadian politics and the most engaged page in Ontario politics. There are several other Proud pages, which are sister pages in other provinces, and Ontario Proud also operates a national page called Canada Proud.
During the last provincial election in Ontario, Ontario Proud was registered as a third party political advertiser pursuant to that province's Election Finances Act. It was previously advertised on television, but it has largely focused its work on non-traditional political advertising on social media, generally using memes, videos and other viral content, both satirical and serious.
Our group intends to register with Elections Canada as a third party advertiser in the forthcoming federal election. Ontario Proud is entirely domestically supported. It has not received, nor will it ever receive in the future, financial contributions from foreign sources.