Evidence of meeting #111 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was identification.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
To my knowledge, no, we have never had a request to refer a political party to any service like that.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The reason that's interesting to me is that in this bill, there's no.... Political parties remain outside of Canadian privacy laws. We're in this unique space, yet the type of information....
Just from a security expert point of view, if you were able to gather information on individuals—voting preference, where they live, petitions they've signed, all sorts of consumer behaviour—that would be an information-rich data source, would it not?
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
I think, as you look at some of the recent activities in terms of some of the things that have come out about social media and trend analysis, etc., that certainly would be the type of data you could use to profile.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yes: clicks, behaviour, all sorts of things. That would be a high prize, wouldn't it, for some of these hackers? That would be commercially quite valuable?
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
From the—
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I will tell you an individual's shopping habits. I will tell you their voting habits, individual by individual.
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
All of those types of things have been shown to have a very high commercial value, especially in terms of direct targeting, whether it's for commercial marketing or targeting in terms of social media engagement.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I assume you've paid some attention to what's happened south of the border.
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
Of course.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Would Canada be exposed to similar threats? We're not talking about hacking into Elections Canada. We could also talk about misinformation and disinformation and trying to sway an election.
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
Yes. In the report, we actually point out that this is probably where we're more vulnerable. The election itself is quite secure in terms of paper ballots and hand—
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yes, we're not doing voting machines and we don't vote online, so we don't have any of those threats. We do have significant threats when somebody is able to influence voters by hacking into Mr. Zachariah's and Ms. De Jaegher's system or by influencing young people through misinformation about candidates.
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
Certainly there's misinformation, but there's also the fact that social media is set up such that you don't always know why you're getting information pushed to you, because it's profiled based on other things.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Right. Under this bill, those social media agents, like Facebook and Twitter, don't have any obligation with regard to ads or misinformation posted on their sites. I would point to our two friends from CFS and say that many young people, like many Canadians, get the large majority of their news and information from social media. Is that fair to say? I don't want to generalize.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
We have all sorts of rules about the print media with respect to ads, influence, and donations, and we have almost none in this bill pertaining to social media. I said this earlier today, but are we fighting the last war as opposed to the next one?
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
I think in general, social media is one of those things that are very hard to figure out how to deal with.
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
One of the things we're trying to do is to increase awareness so that people at least question why they're seeing something and to make people aware that they're not necessarily seeing what they expect; they're seeing what's being pushed to them for other reasons. It's not a neutral feed of data.
Liberal
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Thank you.
My initial questions are for the Canadian Federation of Students, whoever would like to answer.
I know that your executive director, Bilan Arte, has gone on record before to call the Fair Elections Act, Bill C-23, an insult to Canadian youth and a form of voter suppression. Why did you feel that way about Bill C-23, referred to by your organization as the “unfair elections act”?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
That was our previous executive director, Toby Whitfield, but we still maintain that position, of course.
Primarily, we felt that the changes made through the act would influence already marginalized populations, and there was research to bear this out in terms of, for example, homeless populations and populations that move frequently, students being one of them.
We found that for students in particular, who oftentimes live in homes, for example, with five, six, or seven roommates in some cases, it's tricky. The line we were often given was that we just had to bring a utility bill with our name on it. When you're living in that kind of situation—and many students are—whose name is on the utility bill or on any form of identification? It becomes extremely complicated, and at times it becomes so complicated that students will just give up. That's why the voter identification card was a useful means for students to access their vote, essentially.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
How many students do you think may have been impacted by the taking away of voter information cards?
