AggregateIQ Data Services Ltd. received the one-time contribution from the National Research Council for a nine-month project aimed at developing digital tools to predict who would turn out to vote and the likelihood of supporting a specific candidate, and to predict the outcome of a campaign's communications strategy.
The head of one of Canada's largest banks is urging the federal government to stem the flow of investment capital from this country to the United States — because, he warns, it's already leaving in "real time."
Acting minister for democratic institutions Scott Brison plans to meet with Canada's cyber spy agency and domestic spy service to assess threats to the electoral system and the protection of personal information.
"Let's say he had boundary issues on data even back then," said the insider, who noted that Christopher Wylie's descriptions of his methods in media reports sounded familiar. "He effectively pitched an earlier version of exactly this to us back in 2009 and we said, 'No.'"
At age 17, Christopher Wylie worked in the office of Canada's opposition leader, who at that time was then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, said one of the reports.
The federal government committed hundreds of millions of dollars in its recent budget to help reinforce Canada's cyber defences — but if the effort fails to prevent a major attack, Ottawa can always turn to its little-known $102-billion emergency stash.
Health and labour groups are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to remove Finance Minister Bill Morneau from the government's national pharmacare file over comments he made about the freshly launched effort to explore the issue.
The federal government appears poised to commit what some believe could be a significant amount of cash in next week's budget to protect more of Canada's lands, inland waters and oceans.
