First of all, the guidelines don't come from us. Public Works is the operational arm. The policies and any guidelines, processes, procedures come from Treasury Board Secretariat, which is responsible for administrative policy.
As the operational arm, I can walk you through the process. Our job is to in fact do just that: we work with departments to help them understand what the processes are; what laws, policies, and procedures they're supposed to follow in managing their advertising. I can't speak for their particular choices, but I can speak to the process writ large.
A department, typically, for a large campaign, would work with an advertising agency. Advertising agencies are à la fine pointe of their industry. They have proprietary research tools and other research tools. They stay on top of where to find their audience, what their media consumption habits are, what they react to, the time of day that they're on different media. They have access to all of this information.
Typically, a department would work with their advertising agency, and they would say to them—I'm just making this up—“Okay, here's my communications challenge. This is what I want to do. I need to speak to parents of small children about the importance of getting vaccinated.” They would sit down, and they would say, “Here's what we've done in the past. Here are some numbers. Here's how successful we are. Here's where we think there might be a gap.” They would work together with their ad agency, which would come back with research, so evidence, to support their recommendations for media. They would say, “Okay, according to the latest research, this is where you will find these people. Mothers of these small children are using this media, at this time of day. You might wish to do this.” They'll come back with recommendations for a plan. It will be reviewed by departmental experts, so people who are professionals in the communications field, and they might challenge this back and forth. They'll look at whether it jibes with the budget and whatever else. If it all seems to make sense, they will approve that plan.
Then it comes into my group, which does not look at it from a communications perspective; that's not our job. Our job is to look at it and see whether the plan meets policy requirements with respect to things like the federal identity program. So, “Yes, you're creative. It's clearly marked Government of Canada in the way that it should be. You're reaching out to both anglophone and francophone Canadians in an equal way”—based on population distribution and those types of things—“Now with the new policy, your advertising is non-partisan.” We look, and if it hits all of those marks, we then give it an authorization number. That then goes to the next step, which is the buying process. So that authorization number—sorry....