Big Data in Canadian Elections

It is election year. Time to review how big data will affect the outcome. These days, big tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are the real threats to a free election and democracy itself. This reality is not lost on our politicians. The Federal political parties, over the last few years, have actively tried to harness this power. It is time to introduce you to the Liberalist Server, owned and operated by the Liberal Party What is this server?

This server is a "voter identification and relationship management system." What does this mean? It gather information by macro-targeting all ridings across Canada including political affiliation, demographics, family sizes, family composition and estimated age of voters. This year we became aware of the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw Facebook hand over the info of 50 million users. The whistle blower in this scandal was Christopher Wylie. Wylie used to work for the Liberal Party and even worked on the Liberalist server.


Who runs the data for this server? That is Thomas Pitfield, lifelong friend of Justin Trudeau and married to former Liberal Party President Anna Gainey. He runs it through his company Data Sciences. Several members of Data science are ex liberal party workers. These workers include VP Sébastien Fassier who was a Liberal Digital Strategist, Sean Wiltshire was liberal director of data analytics, and Nadya Wilkinson, Liberal manager of Campaign Technology Support is Data Sciences Director of Operations.

The server is powered by NGP VAN. What is NGP VAN? It is the "leading technology provider to Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations". It is used by nearly every single Democratic Campaign in the US.

It was used for the Presidential Campaigns of Obama 2008 & 2012, Clinton in 2016, Sanders 2016, Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren, The British Liberal Democrats and the Liberal Party of Canada.


Big tech is used to compile information on you, your friends and your family in order for these parties to figure out the best way to target you to influence your decision come election time, and the Liberalist server is just the tip of the iceberg