I’ll defend Ontario Proud’s right to say ridiculous things, but there a number of remaining concerns and questions after OP’s appearance at our committee yesterday.
We were told that Ontario Proud complies with all provincial privacy laws. When I pointed out that PIPEDA is the operative law that applies to commercial orgs in Ontario, but does not apply to non-commercial orgs like OP, we were told they comply with the “spirit” of that law.
Of course, consent is central to privacy rules. Ontario Proud acknowledged making 2.5 million phone calls and sending 1 million text messages in the last provincial election, but could not explain how or if consent was obtained.
Where did Ontario Proud receive those millions of numbers? From an undisclosed vendor. Who selected the numbers? The undisclosed vendor.
Ontario Proud claimed to have only received aggregate data from those calls/texts, but also claimed to have run GOTV which requires individual level data. Who retained access to that individual data? The undisclosed vendor.
Why would Ontario Proud pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to make millions of calls/texts, but not receive individual level data from that campaign that it paid for? It makes no sense.
Why did a “nonpartisan” and “grassroots” organization spend hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporate donations on a partisan voter contact and GOTV campaign?
Most importantly, who is the undisclosed vendor, and what happened to the individual level data from the millions of calls/texts that Ontario Proud paid for?
We need to amend PIPEDA immediately to cover political parties, and especially political third parties, as our committee unanimously recommended in our recent report.
And we need to ensure that political third parties do not become vehicles for avoiding our otherwise strong rules against unlimited corporate donations in our elections.
