Have federal political parties abused data?
Jim Balsillie, Council of Canadian Innovators, arrives to appear as a witness at a Commons privacy and ethics committee in Ottawa on Thursday, May 10, 2018. File photo by The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick
By Jim Bronskill
Canada's competition watchdog is looking into a complaint about the data-harvesting practices of the main federal political parties.
In its complaint to the commissioner of competition, the Centre for Digital Rights flagged what it calls the large-scale misuse of big data and targeted digital advertising of the Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic parties.
The centre, established by businessman and philanthropist Jim Balsillie, released a letter Wednesday from the Competition Bureau saying it had begun an investigation of the complaint.
Information about prospective voters is helpful to political parties for everything from door-to-door canvassing to shaping platforms. In the age of algorithms and vast databases, there are new concerns about how parties use such information to track and target people.
The centre says the parties' use of personal information undermines the trust of Canadian voters "in the marketplace of goods, services and ideas" and contravenes the prohibition on deceptive marketing in the Competition Act.
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