All right. Communications, eh?
The main thing I wanted to start by saying is how excited I am to be doing this. Thank you very much for asking me.
I think it's helpful to understand where I'm coming from as somebody who studies government and political communication.
The first thing you should know about my approach is that we should think about communications much as we think about ethics. By this I mean that a situation is rarely black and white; it's not as though somebody is always necessarily wrong or always necessarily right. Situations are constantly in a state of evolution, and we should think of a lot of it as a matter of opinion.
What I often say when I'm interviewed by journalists is that much is in the eye of the beholder. When journalists ask me something, I'll say, “Well, you may think that, but somebody else might think something different.”
It's also helpful to understand that the academics who study in this area sometimes are very critical and sometimes very political. I myself—very much, I would argue, like Dr. Rose—try to eliminate biases in the research I do, to identify information, and to present suggestions for reform that people would say are non-partisan and pragmatic.
I would suggest that the default position of government, no matter which political party happens to be in government or whether we're talking at the provincial-territorial level, should be transparency. More than that, the default should also be proactive disclosure, so that information is available before people even ask for it.
I also think that, just as a general principle, we should recognize that in the political game there are different opinions based on whether a party at any given time happens to be in government or in opposition. We should accept the fact that many public servants are risk averse; they're secretive, they're worried, and they are increasingly operating in a frenetic, online public sphere.
Journalists often have unrealistic demands. They're doing an important job, but at the same time their timelines are shrinking. They make demands on what must be available and when it must be available, and it can be very difficult to be able to provide that information to them in a timely manner.
Last, I think we should accept that people have different political agendas. We can't live in a world in which we just say that everything should be available all the time, because the reality is that sometimes information may cause actual harm. The question is one of trying to figure out when that might happen.
To focus my suggestions about the kinds of things that might be done, I wrote a book called Brand Command. This particular book is the one I'm going to refer to in a moment.
On pages 369 to 377 there is a list of suggestions. The first suggestion, the one I'm actually excited to mention, is to have Parliament regularly update the Government of Canada's communications policy. I'm really pleased to see that we're even having this conversation.
The second suggestion—whether or not Parliament would be able to do this is another matter, but I recommend it—is that there should be a political communication code of ethics. In the book I get into the reason I think that would be helpful.
Here is something which I think Parliament may want to consider doing. In my opinion, there should not be public taxpayers' or any donor funding provided for what we would call “de-branding”—often people refer to it as “negative advertising”—without people's specific, explicit knowledge that money is going in that direction. Some of this is explained in the book.
The fourth thing I recommend is that political parties should not be using the official colours of the Government of Canada. That's a very non-partisan statement, but it is important to me that there not be confusion between a political party and an operation of the government.
I think Mr. Whalen is on your committee, from Newfoundland and Labrador. He would know that here in Newfoundland and Labrador it's very common for the licence plates to change colour. If you're in Newfoundland and Labrador and you see that the licence plate is blue, it's usually because of what political party is in power at the time. If the licence plate is red, it's because....
Yes, he's nodding his head.
These are the kinds of things that happen quite a bit, and to me they're a source of concern.
Next, in my view there should be annual reports about money that is spent on what we would call photo ops, or what is often called in academia “pseudo events”. We have annual reports for advertising and public opinion research. I think it's magnificent that they do those, but I would suggest that reports are actually needed on spending related to photo ops. Photo ops involve an awful lot of time and effort and can be seen as an alternative to advertising. It seems to me it would be useful to have such reports.
The last thing is—again, whether or not it were Parliament doing this—it would be helpful for society if we were to have a form of checklist to assess government advertising. When I do interviews with journalists, they're often trying to understand whether or not government advertising is acceptable or whether it's seen as partisan. There's nothing I can ever say to them. I can't say, “Look at this list; this is the list of things that exists.” Dr. Rose knows that in Ontario, for example, there is a bit of a list that can be drawn upon, but the lack of any form of guidance for journalists can be quite difficult.
I have two further suggestions to bring to the committee's consideration.
Since I prepared Brand Command, I've conducted some research using access to information for both the Government of Canada and the provinces and territories. A further suggestion I have is that, in my view, communications planning templates should by default be available online. What I mean by planning templates is anything that I would call or academics might call “below-the-line documents”, such as planning documents for media inquiry processing. Templates don't have to be filled out, but they would provide the structure of things.
Think about a briefing note. The structure of what is in a briefing note is often publicly available. Certainly for a cabinet paper we would see what the structure is. What we don't see, however, is the structure of communications planning templates, such as for event planning, for rollout plans, for calendars, all these things that, to me, should by default be available online.
The last comment I would offer is that a little more recently—I haven't researched this, so I have to preface my comment with that—I'm coming to the opinion that it would be helpful to have proactive disclosure of social media campaigns. I absolutely understand why the government is heading in a direction in which, in lieu of television advertising, for example, or print advertising, much of the advertising is going online: it's very targeted; it's efficient.... There are many other reasons that it's useful. It's good value for money, obviously. The challenge is that only certain people might see that information, and a government, in my view, should make sure that everybody has the opportunity to see information that it makes available. This is especially the case for those who don't happen to be on social media.
I would argue that it would be useful to have a depository in which anything that involves social media could be seen by people easily and they wouldn't have to search anything out. Again the default, in my view, should be proactive disclosure rather than reactive disclosure, as a general working principle.
I've managed to stay within 10 minutes. I hope that's okay.
Thank you.