Evidence of meeting #97 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. This is extremely interesting.
There's one thing that's floating around in my mind. Are we chiefly concerned here with the nature of government or public advertising, or is it with the amount of the ad spend? That question begs a follow-up on my honourable colleague's concern about the money spend. Social media advertising is disrupting the whole traditional advertising spend—you know, dollars actually equal impact. It's a whole new world out there. There's a philosophical side to this conversation, which is exactly the kind of conversation I like to have, personally, and that's just something I want to throw out there.
On the money side, the $13.6 million, my understanding from reviewing my notes was that a lot of that was government departments. That also comes back to this question of how, when we say government ads, we immediately think government, executive, political-type advertising, whereas I think we're trying to get to a place where we're talking about public service information campaigns, which are in the public good.
I'd like to have your comments on both of those. If I can get to the external review question, I'll get to that as well, but it brings to mind the 1970s, when the concern of the day was subliminal advertising. Are we talking about that?
Maybe Mr. Rose could answer first, and then Professor Marland.
11:40 a.m.
Prof. Jonathan Rose
The issue is not so much about the amount of money spent. In fact, one of the changes, which reduces it by $40 million as I understand it, is a good step in the direction of reducing government advertising. It's really around the propriety of advertising, in other words, ensuring that government ads fulfill a strong public service goal. That is where those criteria are so important and where, as I tried to suggest in my comments, what is needed are statements that justify and get the government to explain why government is needed. What function is it fulfilling? Is it informing citizens? Is it telling them about rights? Is it telling them about services? Where is the demand for this?
In Ontario, and I'm sure at the federal level, all ad plans come with a public opinion survey that demonstrates the need for the campaign. That's very important, because it justifies that the campaign is legitimate.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
11:40 a.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, As an Individual
I'll just say you started in the right order, because Professor Rose definitely has a lot of expertise in the area of government advertising. Just to prove that point, when you were asking the question, I was thinking back to my point about how we really need to be thinking about these photo ops.
It's very easy for a lot of us to think about advertising. Advertising is often a pejorative word, but as Dr. Rose has mentioned, there are actually quite a lot of good things about it. However, for somebody like me, I look at communications as a whole, and advertising is often just one component of all the different touch points that government will have with Canadians. So it's easy for the media to say there were this many million dollars spent on advertising, which in itself sounds kind of bad, right? We shouldn't be spending anything on advertising, because it's about mind control or propaganda. There's just this inherent sense that it's evil and wrong.
I would suggest that, in some ways, if we actually had the dollar amounts for how much money was being spent on these pseudo events, these photo ops where you have all sorts of government employees planning for an event, where you have people being potentially flown in, you have rooms being rented, you have signs being made.... You have all these things going on, and what's happening is you have very structured speaking notes and information going out to journalists. These events are not really designed for the public. These events are actually designed for the media, so the media can then take that information and go out to the public.
From my perspective, unless we have the dollar amounts for that, it's hard to put in perspective, really, the dollar amounts for advertising. All we hear is millions, and it's hard to understand whether that's good or bad.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
On that question of oversight, then, to bring it back to the topic at hand, we know that a function of this new policy is, all the same, to oversee how those dollar amounts are being spent and if it's being done appropriately. I'd like to hear a bit more about your views on whether the Office of the Auditor General should be auditing.... Well, they will be auditing the ASC process. How often should that take place and what should the scope of that audit be? Should there be legislated independent oversight of government advertising?
Do you want me to start with you, Professor Marland?
11:45 a.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, As an Individual
It's funny, because if somebody were asking this question, I would immediately say to pick up the phone and call Dr. Rose. He's definitely—
11:45 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
11:45 a.m.
Prof. Jonathan Rose
Okay. I have a minute. I also want to respond quickly to the subliminal advertising thing.
Very quickly, when the Conservatives were in power in Ontario in the 1970s, they ran this ad campaign, “Life is good, Ontario. Preserve it, conserve it.” That was a not-too-veiled reference to the party in power, but the kind of subliminal advertising we see now is much more subtle. Last year, the government, the federal Liberals, was campaigning on a position with regard to the Ontario retirement pension plan, and the federal Conservatives had a different position. The provincial Liberals intervened by running a government ad campaign about that very issue. That's not subliminal, but it is a sort of conflation of interests, if you will, and viewers or readers don't have an idea where it's coming from.
On your question about the Auditor General—
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Unfortunately, we're out of time, but I know we're going to have enough time in subsequent rounds. Perhaps, Madam Shanahan, you could, at the right opportunity, ask Professor Rose to expand upon those thoughts that he couldn't quite complete.
I will now go to a five-minute round.
From the Conservative side, Mr. Shipley or Mr. Diotte, would one of you want to take over?
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to our committee. This is also my first meeting. We're in a bit of a learning stage.
I think this topic came up prior to Parliament's summer break.
One of my questions was around the Auditor General. As you know, often the Auditor General has a rotation for when audits will be done, unless there is a request. Usually a request would come up due to something that someone may see as a concern or an abnormality. I think it is clear that, at some point, the Auditor General does.... Because of this policy, do you see that there should be...? It's a substantial change but, as mentioned, it's not huge dollars. I have a couple of questions following that. I'll follow up with a question on the Auditor General. On a rotation basis, or because it's new policy, should there be something that happens within the next two or three years?
Mr. Marland first, please, and then Mr. Rose.
11:45 a.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, As an Individual
I'll just express my opinion that I think an awful lot of Canadians put a lot of faith in an Auditor General. They believe that the Auditor General, whoever happens to occupy that office, is somebody who can look at things objectively, so generally speaking, I would say that's a good move. That's a good thing to do, although we shouldn't suggest that it's necessarily perfection. I think the quest for perfection on this is a kind of folly.
Otherwise, should it be something that occurs in next two or three years? To me, it would be something that should occur at the earliest opportunity. If everything that's occurring is above board and is appropriate, why would we delay?
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Yes, it always seems to be that when you talk to the AG, it's a backlog. How does something get interjected between the different studies that are needed?
Mr. Rose.
11:45 a.m.
Prof. Jonathan Rose
I think an Auditor General is really useful for doing an audit on value for money. If they were to do an audit on value for money on advertising, that would be useful.
To answer Ms. Shanahan's previous question, I think it may not be the best organization to do an assessment of advertising. While the advertising standards council has a lot of things going for it, I think it needs to be responsible to Parliament. At present, it is not responsible to Parliament. I would suggest some kind of legislative parliamentary body that would do that.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Marland.
There's an interesting thing on colours. In Ontario, I'm not sure what our colours are, but I think our licence plates are black, until the colour wears off. I don't know how you deal with the colours, quite honestly, because there are multicoloured signs in advertising. They might bring in at least two and maybe three party colours. We all know the Canadian flag, and if I had my way, the Canadian flag would be on everything. I think that defines us. As we go around the world and as we talk to students who come here from around the world, the Canadian flag represents a whole lot of good things, including the integrity and quality that we provide in Canada.
Governments are a service. They're service industries. You have the colours as an issue here, and then you talked about the feel-good type of advertisements that go out, and you did mention Canada 150. Then there are issues around coming up close to elections. They're two different ones, in my mind. I think that in most cases you would have to separate those. For Canada 150, we did an amazing job in many things in that advertising, and we should be promoting Canada and making people feel good, not only here, but for those who come here. In terms of the tourism, I think that's what we tried to do.
You've said, Mr. Marland, that you aren't sure, but when we're looking at a policy, somebody has to help us be sure about what we're going to do. This question is going to be kind of open-ended, Mr. Chair. I'm hoping that both of you might put some thought into how you could help us with this policy to make it more transparent, and also into when we put forward our multiple colours, not just the ones that go onto signs, and how we can use those in an appropriate way, always remembering that, for government, one job we have is that we're a service provider and also, we promote our country.
I'll leave it at that. If you have any comments, I'd appreciate it.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you, Mr. Shipley.
Professor Marland and Professor Rose, at the conclusion of our meeting today, I will be asking both of you to submit any additional information that you think would be of benefit to the committee. Please submit it, whether it be in a short note or a more technical brief. You can certainly send those comments and your suggestions, if you have any, to our clerk.
Now we'll go to Mr. Peterson for five minutes.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today. It's very beneficial to us to bring your expertise and your experiences to bear on this study. We appreciate your time.
There is so much to talk about. This is such a broad field of study in terms of what we're doing here.
First of all, generally speaking, I want to talk about the directive. I think both of you, in your initial remarks, said that it is generally welcome and obviously has some positive features. Today in the committee, I think we're focusing mainly on the goal towards non-partisanship, which is of course a fundamental part of the new directive.
The directive also talks about the effective management of campaigns that are “well coordinated” and “clear and responsive to the diverse information needs of the public”. I'm wondering if you think those objectives of the directive are met in practice, and if there are ways in which we can tighten up those components on the directive at all, or even if you've given much thought to it.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, As an Individual
I'm thinking. That's an example of something that I would want to follow up with.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
