Government Operations Committee on June 15th, 2017

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It sounds like a bit of a work in progress.

[Christiane Fox]

It's about the sophistication depending on the tools that we have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Drouin, you have five minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Baird, I read your statement, and one issue that's important to me is the fact that we now prohibit advertising initiatives that have not yet been approved by Parliament. This issue was raised for me as a Canadian, when I was just a private citizen. A few years ago, as I recall, the previous government announced an income-splitting policy that had not yet been approved by Parliament, and it therefore wasn't official government policy. We know that they got into some trouble with the jobs grant, which had not yet been negotiated with provincial governments and employers. I think the ASC slapped them down a little bit, because there were some complaints over there.

I understand the new policy, but in terms of the previous policy, how was it that governments could advertise something that wasn't approved by Parliament? How could they get that approval?

[Louise Baird]

I'm very good at answering questions about the new policy, or I think I am. I think in all the research and all the work we did, and in our investigations of what was happening in other jurisdictions, provincially and internationally, we saw that as a bit of a gap. That's why we put it in this new policy. I can't really speak to why it wasn't there before, but we did recognize it as something important. That's why we have it in the new policy.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay.

With the new policy, does “approved by Parliament” mean that royal assent has to be received before you can commence advertising on a particular issue?

[Marc Saint-Pierre]

Yes. If a campaign that comes in doesn't meet the criteria, we will withhold the ADV number, which is the buying power. We will not authorize that department to go ahead. We will go back to Treasury Board. You cannot announce something and say it's subject to government approval. That's not possible today.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay.

The other issue is around the trade agreements that require ratification. Explain this to me. So we have to pass the law in Canada, in Parliament again. I'm just trying to understand this. If it's ratified, it has to be ratified through Parliament. It's not a secret that we're embarking on NAFTA negotiations. If the government of the day signs a deal through NAFTA, then until it's been ratified officially in Parliament, we cannot advertise to the Canadian public to tell them how great it is or how terrible it is.

[Louise Baird]

That's correct.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay.

With regard to the third party oversight, the advertising standards council does that. What process do you guys go through?

Mr. Saint-Pierre, you explained it a bit.

[Marc Saint-Pierre]

Departments contact us to tell us that they have obtained approval to run an ad campaign, that they have hired an advertising firm, that they have developed a creative concept for that ad, and they tell us whether the ad will run on television or the Internet.

There is a form they must fill out on the Treasury Board's website. As a first step, that form informs us of the initial creative concept. We complete our part of the form and submit everything to Advertising Standards Canada, or ASC, which gives us input on the preliminary creative concept, indicating that it meets all the criteria. So that is a non-partisan opinion.

Afterwards, departments continue to work with their advertising firm, they submit the final creative concept and all the required documents in both official languages. They submit all that to us, and we in turn submit it to ASC. As for the contract, ASC must decide whether the product is compliant within a three-day period. I must commend the organization because it usually makes that decision within one working day. If we don't get a green light from ASC, the campaign will not go ahead.

Of course, people from Ms. Mitchell's team also communicate with departments.

We are learning new things from one campaign to the next, so we are trying to plan better in order to be able tell departments what seems acceptable to us based on our experience. However, if we do not get final approval from ASC, in both official languages, when it comes to the final creative concept, the campaign cannot go ahead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll have a very brief three-minute intervention by Mr. Weir. Then we'll go back to our full seven-minute round of questioning.

Go ahead, Mr. Weir.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you.

I'd like to return to the non-partisanship criteria. The third one states, “The primary colour associated with the governing party cannot be used in a dominant way, unless an item is commonly depicted in that colour.” Of course, the maple leaf in the Government of Canada logo is depicted in red, the same colour that the Liberal Party uses.

Do you see that being a problem?

[Louise Baird]

No, in fact the example you give is one of the exceptions. The Canadian flag, of course, is red. We're not going to change it to purple. Another good example that we've seen a few times is the uniform of the RCMP, which is red. Again we wouldn't change that in an ad campaign that the RCMP would be doing.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Doesn't this pose a bit of a challenge if one political party has managed to have the same colour as many national symbols or, perhaps by being the governing party, has managed to cause many national symbols to be the same colour as the party's?

[Louise Baird]

I think people know and understand that the flag is red and that the RCMP uniforms are red. That's the reality. I can't really speak to that being the colour of the governing party. I don't think we would change those specific.... We wouldn't change our flag colour in an ad, because that's not just what the reality is.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Yes, it just seems that we have a situation where it is relatively easy to question, say, a Conservative government putting everything in blue, whereas there's really no way of questioning a Liberal government doing the same thing because—

[Louise Baird]

I can tell you that there have been a couple of ads that were submitted to the ASC where the dominant use of red has been questioned and has been modified. I would say that the process is actually working. We have a few examples of that.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Can you tell us more about those examples or how many times it happened?

[Louise Baird]

Sure. There have been four cases to date where, during that initial phase that Marc talked about, where we're looking at sort of early creative, during those concepts, for example, there was one case of a red text box with no necessity for the text box to be red. It's not the colour that a text box has to be. In that case the department realized that and changed it to a different colour.

[Christiane Fox]

Sometimes it's things like a red parka versus changing it to a black parka.

As the creatives are done, we take a look at them. They're submitted. Through the ASC's kind of evaluation against the criteria we have seen a few examples, but they're small and they're modified. Then they move forward. As you noted, the Canadian flag is something that we think about, as you said, the colour red, but it is the flag. The balance of the ads have to meet every single criterion that is in that definition.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Now we're going to our final seven-minute round of interventions.

Madam Shanahan, we'll start with you, please.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Actually, I'll give the first three minutes to my colleague, Ramez.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Shanahan.

I want to thank all of you.

We have talked about many things, but I wanted to get some information. I used to work in the municipal sector, and the information I provide now as an MP really consists of advertising on programs intended for such organizations.

Is there a more organizational, more goal-oriented communication plan for programs that are, ultimately, intended for a select target audience? It's not enough to just announce good news or general investments.

[Christiane Fox]

Absolutely. There are different reasons to advertise. One of them may be recruitment or the promotion of tourism. Most of the advertising is there to ensure that Canadians are aware of programs and services provided by the Government of Canada, and that they have the information they need to apply for grants, and so on.

We encourage departments to set targets for their key programs—public targets. In the context you are talking about, municipalities could perhaps....