Cambridge Analytica whistleblower to testify before parliamentary committee

Chris Wylie, the whistleblower at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal, will appear before the parliamentary privacy committee, says ConservativeMP and chair of the committeeBob Zimmer.

A date has yet to be set for Wylie to appear.

"We are working on a date that he is able to attend in person,"Zimmersaid in an email.

The committee unanimously agreed last month to invite Wylie to testify. Wylie, who has appeared before a parliamentary committee in the U.K. to talk about the relationship between his former employer CambridgeAnalytica Facebook and political data-mining,has said he would testify in Canada if asked.

Wylie co-founded Cambridge Analyticabefore leaving thepolitical consulting company in 2014. Heis at the centre of allegations that the U.K. company improperly accessed data from as many as 87 million Facebook users to identify voters who might be sympathetic to U.S. President Donald Trump's message and target them with social media messages.

Facebook has estimated that data belonging tomore than600,000 Canadian users may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

The standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics is investigating how the Facebook breach could have affected Canadians.

Speaking in front of the committee today, federal Privacy Commissioner DanielTherriensaid he hasn't seen evidence to suggest thatthe Facebook data breach could have affected elections in Canada but it's conceivable.

"To the theoreticalquestion, the answer is yes, it could influence an election, but we don't know whether it was used to that effect," he said.

Addressing the committee, Therrienrenewed his calls for tougher privacy regulations for organizations specifically political parties.

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Parties are left to regulate themselves on how they collect, use and share personal information, he told the committee.

"No federal privacy law applies to political parties. British Columbia is the only province to cover them,"Therriensaid in French.

He called for new privacy and election laws to allow for independent and proactiveinvestigations intohow parties use the voter data that they gather.

Most political parties have "an internal code of conduct" geared toward how parties interact with voters and their personal information,Therriensaid.

But he argued that there is no independent entity to determine whether or notthey live up to those codes.

"The time of self-regulation is over," he said.

Therrienmade the case that either his office or the office of the chief electoral officer of Elections Canada should be allowed to establish that political parties are collectingpersonal datawith the informed consent of voters.

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"Ideally, I would say the two institutionswould be able to verify what is happening,"Therrientold the committee.

Therrien'soffice is also investigating Facebook in the wake of the data-mining controversy,but hesaid he hasn't been able to verify the extent to which the data breach has hit Canadians.

"We are relying on Facebook for information on the profiles breached,but they don't knowentirely themselves,"Therrien said.

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