That's right.
Evidence of meeting #112 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 third.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #112 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 third.
A recording is available from Parliament.
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
That's right.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
That's interesting because one of the concerns we have is this dark money, foreign influence, and the relatively low obligations of the social media companies, which I would argue are at least as influential as, if not more influential than, traditional media in determining opinions, the use of algorithms, and data mining, which is a thing.
How would things have been different under the investigations you ran in the past, say the robocall scandal, if you had had the ability to compel testimony?
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
I think it probably could have helped.
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
We do get results. In the robocall case, there was a charge laid. Somebody was convicted.
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
Yes, it was.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Being able to pull the information and find out how databases were acquired.
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
Absolutely, yes.
If I may give you another example, there was the Charbonneau commission in Quebec, which looked at political contributions that were made through a straw person.
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
They got results really quickly.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
They are under different rules in Quebec than the rules that you have available to you.
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
That's right. They have the power to compel in Quebec.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
If you compare the two cases in terms of expediency and in terms of results, you would argue the laws in Quebec that allowed the requirement of testimony...contrast that to the very long—I would say quite drawn out—case with Pierre Poutine and all the rest.
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
Yes. That's right.
Our investigations take their time because people might not co-operate.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Are you comfortable with the amount of privacy or the lack of privacy requirements that political parties have right now in terms of our own information that we've gathered on Canadians, and how secure the information is?
The fact that we don't require consent of Canadians...we are not required to inform Canadians about what information of theirs we have.
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
That issue, I guess, is really beyond the scope of our mandate.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The reason I ask it is—I realize it might be a scope issue—that when you go through investigations, the protection of data and how data is managed within the parties becomes very relevant to your investigations.
Is that fair to say?
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
Yes, that's true. There are ways for us to preserve data. We can ask the court for a preservation order to force—
7:55 p.m.
NDP
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
Sorry?
7:55 p.m.
NDP
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
That's true, yes.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
It's very difficult to preserve data when you don't know how it's used or where it's stored. I believe parties can right now store data out of the country in servers, under Canadian law, which I suspect would present a problem for you because then you would need to get orders to go into that other country to get at the servers. Am I following it properly?
7:55 p.m.
General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections
That would be the case, unless there were somebody physically present in Canada who was in control of the information and whom we could serve with—