Evidence of meeting #16 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was palantir.
A video is available from Parliament.
Lawyer, Roy Bélanger Avocats S.E.N.C.R.L., As an Individual
I am going to answer you by quoting what Justice Gomery wrote in 2005. I find it sad that here we are 15 years later, and in much the same place. In his preface, Justice Gomery wrote:
The Report that follows chronicles a depressing story of multiple failures to plan a government program appropriately and to control waste—the story of greed, venality and misconduct both in government and advertising and communications agencies, all of which contributed to the loss and misuse of huge amounts of money at the expense of Canadian taxpayers. They are outraged and have valid reasons for their anger.
I feel like we are in the same movie. It is easy to blame the pandemic. As I said in my opening remarks, the rules are made to be loosened, and we can understand that in certain situations. Yes, the urgency was there, but in varying degrees. We can say that the masks were urgent, but was it urgent to award a contract to a charity that was not even able to provide services to francophone Canadians? The plan was to use a Quebec organization for that. Did the government absolutely need to enter into it over the counter, without looking any further, as Mr. Blumberg said earlier, without looking at whether other organizations would have been able to provide the services at a lower cost?
Quebec is no better than any other province. It has lived through scandals. You are a member from Quebec, so you know that. At some stage, we had to stop beating ourselves up. The public inquiry shone a light on what was going on, but we also decided to establish monitoring agencies to make sure it never happened again.
A lot of good things have been done since the Gomery Commission. I have checked that out myself. However, we often think that, if we run into a problem, we will turn it over to the police. That's what I cannot stand.
I am a former Crown prosecutor—
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Mr. Gallant, we just opened a big door. A major collaboration is coming. I do find the Autorité des marchés publics to be an extremely valid solution. We may not have time to go through the entire issue, and I would like to hear Mr. Blumberg's comments.
I just want you to know that, if there is one party with no interest in taking power, it's the Bloc Québécois. We represent our world, which happens to be Quebec. When you talk to me about that, I drift off.
Having said that, which countries can we learn from? Can you give me your opinion on that?
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
If you want me to respond on the issue of the procurement in this case, I would say I'm always worried that we're going to learn the wrong lessons from a scandal. I will tell you that for the average charity receiving maybe....This is not even average, but about a quarter of charities receive government money. They receive over $160 billion from three different levels of government—mainly not federal, mainly provincial—and the amount of bureaucracy that goes into government funding is quite high. It's extreme in some cases.
When you have a $100,000 grant, you have a two-year process of filling in forms and other things. It's very extreme and it takes a lot of due diligence. Most government grants are done very well. This is completely atypical, in that it's such a quick amount, such a large amount, and then it's basically going to a shell corporation and things like that.
I would just say we want to learn. If anything, I would learn from this that this sort of thing shouldn't happen, but in fact we need to look at the whole system. That certainly applies to smaller grants from governments when they are giving away $50,000 or $100,000. There's probably too much scrutiny—
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I believe my time is up but I have another question to ask.
Can you tell me quickly which countries we can learn from?
December 11th, 2020 / 2:45 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
The Americans, for example, ask for a lot more information than the Canadians do, as do the British, the Australians.... In fact, we're very far behind, yes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you very much. That's all the time we have.
Now we go on to Mr. Angus for six minutes.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just before you press that timer, I want to ask two quick questions. One, will we be doing a second round? I ask because I see the clock is moving here.
Also, I understand Mr. Erskine-Smith is bringing up the issue of our bringing Pornhub as witnesses, and I missed the first part of the meeting. Will that happen at the end?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Yes. I've stopped the time.
Mr. Erskine-Smith was kind enough to say that he would deal with it at the end so that it wouldn't interrupt the two panels, because we have four witnesses who apportioned their time today with us.
Mr. Angus, it's 2:48 right now, but if I can get unanimous consent, I can add two and a half minutes to your time right now, so you'd have an eight-and-a-half-minute portion, if you'd like.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I would love everybody and I would sing to you forever—or stop singing—if my dear, sweet colleagues, whom I've treated so well for the last six months....
It's Christmas. Come on.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
I'm going to assume there's consent, because I don't see any shaking heads.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you so much.
Mr. Scott, thank you for joining us today.
Palantir is a new feature in Canada. We're learning a great deal about them, partially because they hired our ambassador to the United States and he got himself into deep trouble for lobbying when he was not legally allowed to. We also learned that the Canada pension plan has become a massive investor in Palantir.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that Palantir came out of the weaponization of data in Iraq and Afghanistan with money that had come from the CIA's venture arm, In-Q-Tel. Is that how a lot of this technology developed initially?
Senior Counsel, Electronic Privacy Information Center
That is correct, Mr. Angus.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I'm thinking of an article that I read in Bloomberg in 2018 that said, “Peter Thiel's data-mining company is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens. The scary thing? Palantir is desperate for new customers.”
The work that Palantir has done in terms of the Falcon project and going after migrants—work that was previously done in going after counter-insurgents in Afghanistan—was played out in the United States' streets.
Does that create serious questions about the human rights abuses that have been linked to Palantir through Amnesty International and other studies?
Senior Counsel, Electronic Privacy Information Center
It does raise questions. Part of the issue, obviously, is that there's a lack of transparency with respect to the sophisticated data mining software that Palantir uses, the data they have access to and how that data is used by the U.S. government and other governments.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
The pitch that Palantir gave here was doing pro bono work, and my Liberal colleagues have been saying how great it was that everyone stepped up to help out in the pandemic. Palantir is just one of those good neighbours that showed up across our border willing to do stuff for free to help us. Our Ethics Commissioner didn't buy that story. He said that if you offer pro bono, it means you're trying to get contracts.
Do you think that Palantir is in the business of doing decent, neighbourly work? They had meetings with our chief of defence. What would you tell Canadians about trusting gifts coming from Palantir?
Senior Counsel, Electronic Privacy Information Center
My perspective would be similar, in the sense that if they are offering pro bono, it's for a reason, whether it's to get government contracts or to basically get access to free data to use in fine-tuning their software offerings or both.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
A big part of their operation is getting the data. I'm concerned about it, because they got to meet all the way up to our Deputy Prime Minister, yet I see that Peter Thiel, when I've been looking up information on him, has been tied to extremist groups on the far right of America. He said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
In terms of the culture that Palantir brings to this, right now the Canada pension plan has become one of the largest investors in Palantir. The Canada pension plan—an excellent group—has a human rights frame or lens that they must apply when they're seeking out investments.
Would you question whether CPP had done due diligence if they're willing to do business with Palantir?
Senior Counsel, Electronic Privacy Information Center
I would question whether they did due diligence, given the way Palantir software is used by a government entity like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been involved in some serious issues related to human rights when they've gathered and caged kids and separated families, etc.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Yes. Certainly we've seen the footage of the caged children. It's been very, very frightening for us on this side of the border. I want to thank you for that.
I'm going to move now to Mr. Blumberg. I was interested when you said that you've studied the Kielburger organization for some time and you figure you have about a 20% picture of how they operate. I've been on committees for 16 years, and I haven't found almost anything as difficult as this.
They have multiple corporate entities, shell corporations and organizations in Canada, the United States and Kenya, and it's all focused on the charity work they say they do. It's Kenya and the children.
Here's a company, Kiel Initiatives Ltd. We found it in their filings. They sold water in Kenya under the ME to WE label. We later found out that they were banned in Kenya. My daughter, who worked in Africa, said, “You have to really do something, Dad, to get banned in Kenya.” The Kielburger group was running this water company, yet still being a charity. Is that something that would raise alarm bells with these multiple holdings, real estate organizations and side deals that they're running?
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
Yes, absolutely. It's not that charities can't do business; there are charities that do lots of business. If you ever go to a hospital and you park in the parking lot, that's a related business. It could be perfectly fine.
What is unusual here is that normally the charity owns the business. The business isn't owned by one or two other people, with the charity providing certain recruitment or volunteers or other things to the business owned by someone else. That's really the anomaly.
I'm all for charities doing business activities. I just want it to be so that when the charity does a business activity, if there's a profit or an appreciation in the value of the business—and many businesses don't have a profit, but there's appreciation in their value—I want that to go to the charity.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Well, that's an important question. We don't know how the finances work. We've been told that 50% goes to the charity, but then it was 80% and then it was 100%, and we don't get to see.
Now, in terms of their structure, for the Kielburger brothers, as we learned, Marc Kielburger did all the main negotiating for the big stars to come to the WE events. Craig Kielburger did all the negotiating with government on the contract with the WE scandal.
They said that they didn't need to register to lobby because they were just volunteers, yet they had the power as volunteers to fire their board of directors when the board of directors of their charity asked for financial documents. Is that something that raises serious alarm bells, the fact of this sort of quasi-founder status? How they operate.... I haven't seen anything quite like it.