OTTAWA—Facebook says it doesn’t yet know whether Canadian users’ personal information was swept up in a massive data harvesting scheme embroiling the social media company.

An employee with Facebook’s Canadian arm, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the company was looking into whether or not Canadian users’ data was collected and shared with Cambridge Analytica.

The employee said the company doesn’t have enough data to say conclusively one way or the other.

The statement came as officials in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom pursue separate investigations into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting company at the centre of the scandal.

A joint investigation by the New York Times and the Observer of London reported that Cambridge Analytica obtained the personal data of 50 million North American Facebook users.

According to the report, the data was harvested by an American researcher who used personality quizzes on the ubiquitous social media platform.

The U.K.-based company then reportedly used that data for its political consulting work for both U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, as well as the successful Leave side in the 2016 Brexit referendum. In a video secretly recorded by U.K. outlet Channel 4, Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix claimed credit for Trump’s election.

Nix was suspended from Cambridge Analytica on Tuesday, the Guardian reported.

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On Tuesday, federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien announced he has launched a formal investigation to determine whether any personal information of Canadians was affected by the alleged unauthorized access to Facebook user profiles.

Earlier in the day, speaking to reporters outside the House of Commons, acting democratic institutions minister Scott Brison said the government is open to hauling Facebook executives before a parliamentary committee and is considering stronger privacy laws in the wake of the scandal.

“Social media platforms have a responsibility to protect the privacy and personal data of citizens and to protect the integrity of our electoral system where they operate,” said Brison.

“We have strong privacy laws in Canada now. We are open to ways that we can actually further strengthen those privacy laws in light of the … strength and growing presence of social media platforms.”

The Liberal government is preparing to review the Privacy Act, which governs how federal departments and agencies protect Canadians’ private information. But in recent weeks the government has been hinting at tighter regulations for the social media giant in response to Facebook’s recent global scandals.

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Brison said Canada will need to work with international partners to address the issue, given the “global nature” of social media platforms. Ottawa would seem to have willing partners in that effort.

Britain’s information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, is pursuing a warrant to investigate Facebook at Cambridge Analytica, seeking access to the political consulting company’s servers. Denham, a former privacy watchdog in British Columbia, told the BBC that Facebook has agreed to stand down on its own investigation until she completes her probe.

Lawmakers in Britain are demanding answers to questions about the data abuse from Facebook’s senior executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has remained silent since the controversy hit this weekend.

“It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process,” wrote MP Damian Collins to Zuckerberg on Tuesday. Collins’s select committee has been investigating the so-called “fake news” phenomenon.

“Given your commitment at the start of the new year to ‘fixing’ Facebook, I hope that representative will be you,” he wrote.

Therrien said Tuesday his investigation will focus on whether Canadians were affected by the data scheme and whether Facebook has complied with Canada’s federal private sector privacy law — the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which requires meaningful, informed consent for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information.

U.S. officials are also turning up the heat on Facebook: half a dozen congressional committees are demanding answers on the Cambridge Analytica controversy. Facebook agreed to send staff to brief the committees Tuesday and Wednesday.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which handles privacy matters, is looking into whether Facebook violated a 2011 order dealing with handling citizens’ personal data.

“The FTC takes the allegations that the data of millions of people were used without proper authorization very seriously,” FTC commissioner Terrell McSweeny said in a statement Tuesday.

“The allegations also highlight the limited rights Americans have to their data. Consumers need stronger protections for the digital age such as comprehensive data security and privacy laws, transparency and accountability for data brokers, and rights to and control over their data,” she said.

With files from Star wire services

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