What Canada’s political parties know about you
How political parties use your information and why they’re not subject to corporate privacy laws

TheStar.com
Sept. 23, 2015
Robin Levinson

From door knocking to asking for donations, digital technology has revolutionized what voter data political parties have access to and how they’re using it.

This election will be the first time that political parties will get a complete electronic list of who showed up at the polls — in the past they only got a list of who was eligible.

While politicians argue that the access to data is just levelling the playing field by giving all parties the same information, privacy experts warn that this data lacks adequate legal protection.

Colin Bennett, a privacy advocate and professor at the University of Victoria, says that the names of who votes is “no business of the political parties.”

He’s especially concerned about the lack of transparency with political databases because they are not subject to the same privacy laws as corporations or public institutions.

“They’re building secret databases, and that’s something they shouldn’t be doing in a democracy,” he said.

Here’s what you need to know about how political parties are collecting your information, and what they’re doing with it.

Are all party databases equal?

According to David McGrane, a political scientist at St. Thomas More College and the University of Saskatchewan, all parties struggle to collect quality data. People move, change their opinions and change their contact details all the time. A potential voter today might be totally uninterested tomorrow.

For years, voter turnout information was collected locally at the riding level, and parties built their lists from the ground up. Some parties, particularly the Conservatives, were much more effective at it.
McGrane said the NDP and Liberals have been playing catch-up with the Conservatives in terms of data collection for years.

“Conservatives are ahead of the curve here,” said McGrane, who holds an executive position with the provincial NDP and whose research tends to focus on the NDP.

But under the Fair Elections Act, which passed in 2014, Elections Canada will now provide all parties with an electronic list of people who voted in the election, including their names and addresses.

This is gold for all political parties, McGrane said. The list will provide them with basic information on the most coveted segment of the Canadian population — people who actually vote.

From there, it’s up to each party build out the list so they can better understand what voters are thinking, and what issues might persuade them to donate or support a candidate.

What type of information do parties collect?

Voter databases are, for the most part, top-secret archives guarded jealously by party officials who are wary of rivals trying to steal their data. Representatives from the NDP and the Conservative Party declined to comment on what information they collect or how they use voter data.

McGrane said that most party databases contain names, phone numbers and addresses, information on volunteerism (if you took a lawn sign or attended a party event) and donor information (if you’ve ever given the party money). Information can also be collected from things like online petitions and social media, although how parties use that information is hotly contested.

Speaking to the Star, Jeremy Broadhurst, who is the national director of the Liberal Party, says the Liberals’ database only collects information volunteered by the voter, such as issues the voter says they’re interested in or topics of conversations they have with candidates during election events. Liberalist, the Liberal’s database, then layers this individual-level data with census data to provide a “depth of perception” about what voters in specific ridings might be thinking.

Tom Flanagan, the former Conservative strategist who spearheaded the creation of CIMS, the Conservative database, says that it wasn’t until the 2004 election that they started “prospecting” — collecting information on potential voters, not just identified Conservative supporters.

That fall, the campaign identified 60 swing ridings and collected information on about half a million potential voters, Flanagan said.

“It just got bigger and bigger after that.”

Although he is no longer intimately involved in the party, Flanagan guessed CIMS now has millions of names.

How is it collected?

Information is collected both electronically and in real life. Door-to-door canvassers armed with voter lists provided by Election Canada interview residents about whom they might vote for, what issues matter and if they’d take a lawn sign. The information then gets entered into an electronic database to be analyzed.

The Liberals and Conservatives have started using mobile apps, which take some of the human error out of the old-school clipboard by automatically uploading information into the respective party’s database.

“Really it’s about empowering your volunteers — none of this works without a great, motivated group of volunteers who are going to be doing that work door to door, phone call to phone call,” Broadhurst said.

Volunteers also collect similar information by telephone, or at campaign events. Alex Marland, a political scientist at Memorial University, said that email is increasingly becoming a popular way for parties to communicate with potential supporters; online polls or “contact for more information” forms can also be used to find out more about potential voters.

In the U.S., it’s much more common for political parties to buy commercial customer information. But in Canada, that information is heavily regulated and difficult to obtain. Flanagan said that when he was with the Conservatives, it was unusual to pay a third-party for information.

Although Flanagan said correspondences with your MP were not collected, he said online petitions to political parties were “fair game” because they were public records.

What is this information used for?

Primarily, voter information helps parties find out who is likely to vote for them so that on Election Day, volunteers can make sure that all their supporters show up to the polls. But over the past decade, data have also played a key role in fundraising.

CIMS is largely credited for the Conservatives’ superiority when it comes to fundraising — as of June, they had outraised the Liberals and the NDP almost 2:1. Flanagan said the turning point was when they started asking “sympathizers” for small donations, people who might agree with the Conservatives on an issue or a policy, but who were not known supporters.

Marland says that more and more, parties are using email to raise money, especially in light of the end of per-vote subsidies from Elections Canada.

“It’s difficult to imagine that you could operate any reasonably professional campaign without it,” Marland said. “How else are you raising money?”

What are the privacy regulations?

Voter lists provide by Elections Canada are regulated by the federal department, and the lists, which contain name and address of each registered voter, are only supposed to be used by authorized members of the party.

“It is recommended that privacy procedures be implemented and that the authorized recipients appoint a person who will be responsible for implementing privacy safeguards,” read the guidelines governing voter lists by Elections Canada.

Party members, candidates and MPs can use the list to solicit donations, communicate with constituents or try to recruit party members. Unauthorized use is a criminal offence with it a fine of $5,000 or up to a one-year prison sentence under the Canada Elections Act.

But political parties are not subject to the same privacy regulations as corporations or public institutions: They don’t have to report data breaches and do not have to give individuals access to the information collected about them.

“There’s no way of knowing what they’re doing so there’s not a lot of transparency,” says privacy advocate Bennett.

Bennett argues that political parties should be regulated and subject to rules similar to private corporations.

Under Access to Information laws, citizens can request access to information collected by public institutions. Political parties don’t fall under either jurisdiction, and their privacy policies can vary.
That’s not to say that privacy isn’t important to political parties. Political parties live and die by popular opinion, and a data breach would be a “disaster” for a party, Bennett said.

“We take it really, really seriously,” Broadhurst said. “The protection of our data is ... of paramount importance to us.”

But Broadhurst was against regulating parties like commercial businesses. Data helps fuel the modern democratic process, he says, and parties should be allowed certain exceptions that companies are not allowed.

“It is a different set of regulations, but it does not mean we don’t put a lot of effort behind the protection of that data and respecting privacy,” he said.