Government Operations Committee on Sept. 28th, 2017

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to our two guests for being here.

It is indeed a very broad subject that leaves room for many impressions. Unless you tell me otherwise, I do not feel that it is an exact science. There is a great deal of social acceptability in terms of the presentation and the media aspect of the information.

I have written a number of notes in the many years in which I have been involved in politics. The public wants to be informed and wants more information. It is about transparency, of course. I don't want to generalize, but the fact remains that part of the population does not look at the information, does not read the news either, and is not informed. They just know about the headlines in newspapers and the news at a glance. In this day and age, with social media, things are even more fast-paced and it is much more difficult to have access to appropriate information. You often wonder what the source of the information is and doubt the information that is presented.

Any government, regardless of its stripe, wants to provide information to ensure that its actions are known. I personally went into federal politics because I felt that, in my area, in my riding, we did not hear about federal affairs. We did not know what was happening in Ottawa. Today, this has changed dramatically. I do not want to give the impression that I'm blowing my own horn, but I am very active in the media and I send a lot of information to my constituents about programs, about what the government is doing, and about what we have been able to accomplish. Even today, I am about to check a news release that tells my constituents where we are at mid-term and what we have done in the past two years. If we don't release that information, people won't know about our actions and will think that we have done nothing.

What do you think about that? What do we need to do to achieve a balance between the desire to access information, on the one hand, and the need to reduce the amount of information, on the other hand?

I will let you answer in the two and half minutes that I have left.

Mr. Rose, perhaps you can answer first.

[Prof. Jonathan Rose]

I think what you've identified is absolutely right. There are these two competing impulses of being bombarded with more social media and not paying attention to the media, but also wanting more information.

It gets back to a previous question that was asked. It is this seeming contradiction between what politicians do and what we're asking the public to do.

I was thinking of the famous quote from Mario Cuomo, a former governor of New York, that we campaign in poetry and we govern in prose. I think citizens want to be invited to be part of the public conversation, but too often they don't feel that they're part of that, and much of the government communication is really seen as self-promotion.

I think the bigger question, which is far beyond the scope of this committee, is how we engage citizens in more meaningful ways so that they have an incentive to follow government information and they have a reason to know what the federal or provincial government is doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Marland.

[Dr. Alex Marland]

I would like to answer in French, but I will answer in English.

My overall comment would be that you're touching on some important elements. The rule of thumb that I use in research is that roughly 15% of the population at any given time is paying attention to politics and government and the other 85% is too busy getting the kids ready for school and everything else. Political marketers and government communications personnel often keep this in mind.

When you provide too much level detail, you're not going to really connect with a lot of people, so you try to keep things simple. For example, when you have advertising on, a political marketer would say to watch the advertising without the sound because for the most part, people are probably running around the house, and the television is on in the background, and what is it they see?

Why am I saying all this? I'm saying it because it gets back to the whole issue of why things like colours matter. It's not just about the issue of fairness. It's about something that is often used. In research we use phrases such as “cognitive shortcuts” and “heuristics”, which is using very few information processing abilities to quickly see things and make impressions. When you think about the concept of colour, I would simply say to you that it is exactly why that matters, because a lot of people don't have the time or interest to pay a lot of attention to things, and they make snap judgments based on small bits of information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Weir, we'll go to you for three minutes.

Colleagues, just to let you know, following Mr. Weir's intervention, we'll go back to another full round of questioning starting with seven-minute rounds.

Mr. Weir, you're on for three minutes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thanks very much.

Professor Rose, I would like to get into this topic of party advertising piggybacking on government advertising. I'm wondering how that would be enforced in practice. I'm imaging a situation where government advertising is used to promote a program, and then later on the political party makes that program a key part of its own advertising. Is there some sort of statute of limitations? At what point is there enough intervening time that the two can't really be connected?

[Prof. Jonathan Rose]

You're talking about the chronology, and the chronology does matter.

For example, in the case that you mentioned, it would be appropriate for a party to later piggyback on a government initiative, but it wouldn't be appropriate for a government to then continue with that same policy. In reality, of course, all parties campaign on what they've done, so there is a really blurry line between these two. What we need to do is make sure that the distinction is as clear as possible. The way you regulate it is by regulating or controlling how taxpayers' monies are spent.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Is it really just a matter of prohibiting government advertising from piggybacking on party advertising?

[Prof. Jonathan Rose]

Yes.

As you may or may not know, Advertising Standards Canada's code of standards' 14 criteria don't even apply to party advertising. The reality, literal and metaphoric, is that you can say anything on party advertising. Truth, veracity, or anything else is irrelevant. There's an amazing exclusion in that code. Even the ASC does not control election advertising.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

That's interesting.

Do you have any thoughts on this issue of party colours? It is an element of the government's policy, and it's something that Professor Marland has talked about a bit.

[Prof. Jonathan Rose]

I think the important point that Professor Marland just raised is the shorthand cue. What we want to avoid, or what we want to limit, is the idea of citizens making shorthand judgments about policies based on something that's extraneous to those policies.

In the end, the role of parliamentarians is to do two things. It is to create legislation and also to try to encourage good judgment. I think on this one we have to encourage good judgment because there's only so far legislation can go.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll revert to our full round of seven-minute questions. We will start with Monsieur Drouin, for seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the witnesses for being here.

My question would be for Dr. Rose, but Dr. Marland, feel free to intervene after.

You've mentioned that government tends to spend more in the last year as opposed to 90 days before the election. I'm just wondering if there's data that shows where the consumer influence or citizen influence has an impact one year prior to.... Where is the major impact on citizen influence when there's government advertising, or any advertising at some point? Is that data available?

[Prof. Jonathan Rose]

Well, the data is available from other studies done on the influence of advertising in an election—party advertising—so we can infer what government advertising would be. That is, it's largely short term and it is largely around confirming as opposed to negating existing beliefs.

The study that I quoted was really around the last five elections, excluding 2015, and showed that government spiked in its spending on advertising in the year before. It varies because, of course, the timing of the elections varied as well.

You've also put your finger on, I guess, a dirty little secret, and that is we really do not know how effective advertising is in influencing the attitudes and behaviours of citizens. We just don't know.

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

Yes, and that's....

Did you want to intervene, Mr. Marland?

[Dr. Alex Marland]

I'll just add that one thing to consider, to try to answer your question, is that advertising is always different, so with government advertising each department is doing something slightly different. Then if we go back to the point I made earlier about how consumers are busy, they're running around, they're using cognitive shortcuts, they're having to spend more energy trying to digest that advertising. As a result, I would suggest that an awful lot of government advertising gets back to that old expression, which is we know that we're wasting a lot of money on advertising, but we just don't know where we're wasting it.

The comment I would have is that if you think about the economic action plan advertising campaign that was undertaken by the previous government, from a marketing perspective it was absolutely brilliant, because it connected everything the government was doing, and it could be on anything, and all everybody heard was, “economic action plan”. I think there's a real incentive for government—again, it doesn't matter what party stripe it happens to be—to use the limited amount of money that they have on advertising to repeat common, consistent messaging. Otherwise I would suggest to you that an awful lot of advertising is actually quite ineffective.

I'd almost beg for people to be able to show me statistics that say this has had a major impact on their decision-making behaviour. In fact, some of the public opinion research suggests that even the economic action plan advertising wasn't really all that effective in changing behaviour.

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

Actually, it brings me to my next point. I want to ask you, Dr. Rose, how Ontario dealt with this. Perhaps you recall, almost 10 years ago already, the “Good things grow in Ontario” ads. That tune still plays in my head. Did it have an impact on behaviour? I remember reading a study, about three or four years ago by the NPD Group, where consumer choices for buying local was number 19. The “Good things grow in Ontario” ad was all about trying to buy local. Could that have been seen as a feel-good ad? How did Ontario deal with that? Were you there at that time?

[Prof. Jonathan Rose]

Well, I was in Ontario. The Foodland Ontario ad, I think we have to understand, is also directed to farmers, who want to see that their work is being supported by the government. In all ads we should really think about to which audience they're directed. For that one, I thought the audience was really as much about farmers, to say, “We're supporting you”, as it was to consumers to say, “You should buy local foods.”

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

Okay.

The last point I want to bring you to is on by-elections. I think you've mentioned that Alberta put a ban on by-election advertising, but Canada's a big country. If I'm doing an English ad, it's not going to have any impact in Quebec, for instance, or my riding, which is 70% francophone. That wouldn't have an impact. Would there be a threshold that you would recommend? Would you just recommend a total ban during by-elections? If there's a by-election being held in B.C, would you say no advertising, a blackout, in B.C.? What would be the recommendation? I'm curious to hear from you as well, Dr. Marland.

[Prof. Jonathan Rose]

Given the nature of technology and the way we access our information, it doesn't really work in terms of geographic location, so it would have to be a blank advertisement. None of the three jurisdictions I cited—Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan—have experienced adverse effects, so I don't know what the impact would be nationally. Again, we do it every election for a longer period of time, so a by-election seems to me a lower threshold.

[Dr. Alex Marland]

I agree with Dr. Rose, but we also have to identify the benefits versus the costs. If we're establishing that we're not exactly sure how effective advertising is in the first place, then to what extent do we have to say that you can't have any advertising any time there's a by-election. Something to keep in mind about a by-election is that these are not necessarily events that are within the government's control. Members leave for different reasons. Sometimes somebody might have passed away, for example.

To answer your question about threshold, which I think is a fair one, you may want to think about the number of by-elections that are occurring at the same time or within a given period. If you happen to have a group of by-elections, the media and everybody else tends to pay a lot more attention. If there's just a single by-election, the national coverage of that single by-election is actually quite limited, so you may want to think about the number of by-elections that happen to be occurring.

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

Great. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Diotte, for seven minutes, please.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Gentlemen, we've talked a bit about partisan ads. Obviously that's part of this whole conversation. We also talked a bit about what the purpose of advertising is. It should be giving much-needed information, not just going for the feel-good factor, etc. Canada 150 might be trotted out as an example of, as it were, feel-good ads. What can we do to police that? Is that even conceivable? I don't know, but I hear what you're saying. You could spend a fortune on feel-good ads and it could be rather partisan. Maybe I'll put that to Professor Rose first.