Facebook Canada is offering closed-door briefings to MPs tasked with publicly grilling the company later this week over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Star has learned.
An email obtained by the Star from Facebook Canada’s public policy team invited members of the House of Commons’ Ethics committee to meet privately with the company before their public testimony on Thursday.
New Democrat ethics critic Charlie Angus called the offer highly unusual, and said in 14 years in parliament he’s never seen a major corporation attempt to meet with committee members on the eve of testifying.
“It speaks to, I think, Facebook’s disregard as a massive international corporation lobbying various governments on major policy,” Angus said in an interview Monday.
“This is an attempt to hear our concerns so they’re better prepared for television, and perhaps, outside of the view of the public, kind of win us over. That’s not how committee work is supposed to be done.”
The omnipresent social media company has been on the defensive for weeks after revelations that 87 million users had their data unknowingly harvested, including more than 622,000 Canadian users. That personal information was then used by consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to attempt to help political campaigns to sway the vote, including the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and the Brexit referendum.
