ANDY BLATCHFORD AND JOAN BRYDEN
OTTAWA
THE CANADIAN PRESS
PUBLISHED 2 HOURS AGOUPDATED APRIL 6, 2018
The Canadian company at the heart of the international scandal over the unauthorized use of Facebook information received $100,000 in federal funding last year to develop data-driven tools for political campaigns, The Canadian Press has learned.
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The privacy controversy has put a spotlight on the use of data by political parties, which depend heavily on access to quality data about voters to target their campaign pitches.
In the months following the 2016 Brexit and Trump victories, the National Research Council provided AggregateIQ with $100,000 in funding, under the Industrial Research Assistance Program, to support a $250,000 project by the company.
A copy of the funding agreement, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, says the project’s objective was to create tools to help political campaigns accurately predict voter turnout, the likelihood of support for a specific candidate and the effectiveness of a given campaign communications strategy.
“At the completion of the project, AggregateIQ will have an agnostic campaign data reporting platform that will enable our staff to provide more efficient consulting in the work we do as well as sell access to the tool for other organizations to use,” reads the agreement.
“This will make our consulting business able to handle more clients and open a new line of revenue in sales and support of a much needed tool in the campaign space.” [...]
