Government Operations Committee on March 10th, 2011

[Louise de Jourdan]

There are--and it is kind of technical--different ways to purchase Internet. They have different cost structures, and they do different things. You can buy in a particular website, and that's easy, right? You buy in a website, and you know where you're placing your ad. The way the payment structure works on these things is that you pay by performance. They call it “cost per thousand”. It takes 1,000 people to click through for that service provider to get a certain amount of money. In those instances, because it takes a lot of click-throughs, they charge a little bit more.

There's another type of ad placement called run-of-network. When somebody clicks on to an Internet site that seems to have the same type of target audience that you're going after, the ad is served to them. That is typically a less expensive buy, but with it is a little bit of a higher risk, because you're not predetermining where they will all land. You're dependent on the use of these filters to say you don't want your ad to be served to any of these sites. We work very hard on those filters. The thing is, as you can appreciate, the Internet evolves, and new sites are added every day. Sometimes it's even hard for Cossette to work with the representatives from these sites, and the representatives don't even know necessarily how many new ones have been added.

Someone asked before about the types of things we do to sort of keep constant and to introduce new checks and balances into the system, and that would be one of them. We try to build in increased safeguards as new technologies and challenges are thrown our way.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Holder.

Madam Coady, five minutes.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you.

I want to move to the future, if I could, for a few moments.

How do you review to ensure compliance? That would be my first question. How do you make sure that all of the policies the government has are actually being met, and that the compliance is there? How do you monitor that?

[Louise de Jourdan]

That's a role we play at different stages in the process.

When an ad first comes in to us, or when we work with a government department, typically it's at the very beginning of the process. When they give us a call and tell us, “We're going to mount an ad campaign”, the first thing we have to ensure--it's in your nice little “roles and responsibilities” there--is that it's a campaign that has been approved in the government ad plan.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

By cabinet, by....

[Louise de Jourdan]

That's right.

So we work with them, and the major checkpoints at the different stages are as follows. At the contracting stage, before they enter into a contract, they have to send us what's called a “9200”. It's really a proof, a signature, that the money is available from the department to pay for that contract before we start the contracting process.

We also verify the creative--

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

So that's all up front.

If I may...because you've tabled that information, and we can just add it to what we have.

[Louise de Jourdan]

Yes. I'm sorry.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

So how do you monitor, after the ads are run...? As I've already pointed out, many people have come to me about this dovetailing. You said you do monitor that. How do you monitor it? Is someone monitoring where ads are being placed? Is someone following up at the end?

I know you do a checklist at the beginning, but what about at the end?

[Louise de Jourdan]

For those specific things, yes; Cossette is bound to monitor the placements to ensure they are compliant with the instructions we've provided.

I have to tell you, though, that they wouldn't necessarily....

What makes it difficult in this instance about the dovetailing is that they don't have access to other people's logs, as you would appreciate.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Okay. And I'm so sorry that I have to keep interrupting you, but I only have a few minutes.

So what you're saying is that the ad agency does that. Have you ever looked at other jurisdictions--for example, the Government of Ontario, the Australian government, the U.K., or other jurisdictions--to see what they might have in terms of policies and procedures and overview of government advertising?

It's a significant amount of money. It's tens of millions of dollars.

Before I turn it over to my colleague, perhaps you could give me a very quick response: have you done that, and if so, what have been your findings?

[Louise de Jourdan]

Have we asked questions? Oh, yes, absolutely; we do it fairly regularly.

About three weeks ago I had a meeting with the people from ARB in Ontario to see how they do things. We do a lot of verification with our colleagues.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Regan, you can have a quick second if you want to ask something.

Mr. Chair, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Regan.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

The Parliamentary Budget Officer this morning indicated that his research indicates that the F-35 stealth fighter jet purchase will cost in the range of $30 billion over its lifetime. Have there been any ads promoting the F-35 purchase? Has the Conservative regime, the government, vetted any ads or spent any money on advertising this purchase?

[Anne Marie Smart]

No. Not to my knowledge, no. It would go through cabinet. No.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You still have one and a half minutes left.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Okay.

I just want to go back to this reviewing. I think that one thing this committee will want to do is ensure that we have the proper policies and that we have no particular interference. All Canadians want that--to make sure that we are spending our money fiscally responsibly as well as ethically.

Can you elaborate on some of that? Have you done a study on this, on the ways in which other jurisdictions actually run their advertising budgets and campaigns? Have you looked at this in both depth and detail?

[Louise de Jourdan]

We've not done a study that compares everything from A to Z. Usually it's on a particular subject. We've done it with respect to certain target audiences they've done.

When we were preparing to renew the advertising agency of record, we looked at the way that other governments were doing it, and--

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Did you note any key differentiations between the way in which the Government of Canada and the other jurisdictions run their policies and procedures? This is not their specific ads but their policies and procedures around advertising.

[Louise de Jourdan]

There are some differences, for sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Okay, just finish briefly. I apologize.

[Louise de Jourdan]

It would have to be on a specific subject, but there are definite differences. Some are more centralized than others. I can give you an example. In Britain everything goes through one office. One office does absolutely everything from A to Z for the entire government. That's very different from our system, which is decentralized. The accountability is decentralized to departments.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madam Coady.

Mr. Warkentin, you have the last question.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.

I will just reference my friend across the way, Mr. Regan, who was talking about the amount spent on H1N1. Obviously it was far more than the amount he indicated.

We on the government side do believe there is an essential responsibility of government to step in, to assist, to ensure there are lives saved. When we think of the H1N1 development, there was a necessity for government to step in to ensure that Canadians were prepared for the impending problems that would come as a result of the flu, and we obviously see the benefits of that. Canadians were well prepared and many Canadians who may have been infected were otherwise spared that situation.

He belittles the investment we made to ensure Canadians are aware of the economic action plan. While it's essential for government to help spare the lives of Canadians, it's also a responsibility of government to help spare the livelihoods of Canadians, to ensure their families have an income, to ensure people have access to jobs and an opportunity to take advantage of the measures that the Canadian government is bringing forward with regard to different tax savings and different training opportunities Canadians have in general. If we were to reference the different ads that were brought—obviously television is one, probably the one that we most often reference in our minds—was there a program designed to link Canadians from one medium to another?

I often think that television is simply the most obvious reminder to Canadians that they should look further. With common branding, when they go to a government website, they see there is an economic action symbol and it would reference back to the television ad. Then by going on the Internet, they would be able to find how they would actually get the individual services provided. Was that linkage there? Is there a common effort to ensure that people can follow the advertising or the common themes to where they might actually be able to take advantage of the opportunities government is providing for individuals?