Government Operations Committee on May 7th, 2026

[Bill Matthews, Secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure to be back with you for one hour. With me today, I have Antoine Brunelle-Côté, the assistant secretary of expenditure management. His day job is the estimates. To my left is Annie Boyer, our chief financial officer at TBS as a department, and on the far left is James Stott, the assistant secretary in charge of communications.

We're looking forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Matthews.

We have Mrs. Block for six minutes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome back, Mr. Matthews and departmental officials.

I would like to start by correcting the record. At our last meeting, I insisted that Minister Ali had told this committee that he had received advice that the advertising rules were being followed by the Government of Canada with regard to the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry. Someone's phone is going off. I've paused the time.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry. Please continue, Mrs. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

I don't get to start from the top.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

No.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

As I was saying, at our last meeting I insisted that Minister Ali had told this committee that he had received advice on the advertising rules being used or followed by the Government of Canada. He did not say that. I went back. I told him that we could check the recording and find out if, in fact, he had. He did not say that. Therefore, I want to correct the record from last Tuesday.

I would say, though, that he did claim that the rules were being followed, so I imagine you can guess where some of my questions will go.

Mr. Matthews, the minister offered his assurance to this committee that using the slogan “Canada Strong” in official Government of Canada communications, even though it appears on multiple Liberal Party of Canada communications, does not violate partisan advertising rules.

Here is my question for you: Is the slogan used by all Government of Canada departments, or do they need to seek approval from the Treasury Board to use the “Canada Strong” slogan?

[Bill Matthews]

Maybe I will give a bit of background, but I will get to the exact question. There is a Treasury Board policy in place on communications and federal identity. There is a subset of rules in that policy specific to advertising, so let's recognize that advertising is a subset of communications. For all advertising campaigns that are above $250,000 in value, there is a special process in which they are reviewed by an independent party for comments to look for partisan messaging or inaccuracies, and there's a requirement for departments to basically undertake to receive those comments and either dispose of them or adjust the campaign before it's launched. That rule is set in place for advertising, and it's specific to advertising.

If you look at the policy itself, deputy ministers of every department are accountable to follow the Treasury Board rules. Should we get questions from departments about using terminology and it goes back and forth, that absolutely happens. Oftentimes, it's around the issues of nomenclature for federal identity and symbols, etc., so that is part of the role.

From an advertising perspective, I've seen no issues in terms of using terminology that's inappropriate or, I'll say, any unresolved issues with the third party review. There is a report issued by Treasury Board Secretariat, and there's another one coming up fairly soon, that makes public the comments the independent party has made on campaigns and what departments have done about it, so that's coming.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Okay, thank you.

Did your department provide advice on the use of the “Canada Strong” slogan? Did you provide advice that it did not violate the rules?

[Bill Matthews]

Advice to ministers is cabinet confidence, but what I can share is this: We have been engaged as officials with our counterparts from departments around terminology such as the use of “Canada Strong”.

I will maybe share my views, because I think this is where we're going. If you had asked me in month one of last year if “Canada Strong” language is offside of the policy, I would have said yes, it was, but as time has gone on, you now have a government that has taken language from campaign promises after being elected and turned those into programs. The Canada Strong pass is a good example; that is an approved government program, and the government can advertise on it. You've seen “Canada Strong” language in titles such as the budget and the spring economic update. We also talked about it here on Tuesday. This is now very much the brand of the government, in my opinion. I will say—

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

I'm going to interrupt you there, because I'm grateful for your opinion, but does the Treasury Board receive or seek out any communications advice when they may be considering using a campaign slogan going forward?

[Bill Matthews]

For Treasury Board—and I'll distinguish between Treasury Board the group of ministers and Treasury Board Secretariat the department—if there's a need to go to Treasury Board to get approval for something and that something is a new program or it includes something that requires something special around advertising, there would be formal advice provided to the board as part of that package.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you.

What consequences exist for departments that violate Treasury Board guidelines on the advertising rules, and what are your enforcement powers?

[Bill Matthews]

Treasury Board policies and directives are a set of self-imposed rules the government of the day sets upon itself. They are mandatory unless an exemption is sought. On something like grants and contributions, financial management or project management, it's very clear that when there's a problem, Treasury Board's powers are—if there's no remediation—to change the delegation. On communications that are not coming to the board, you may not see engagement at all; deputies are accountable.

In my own head, and James may be able to help here, I'm not clear on what the authority of Treasury Board would be in this space because it's not as though the title of the budget comes to Treasury Board for approval.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Go ahead, Madame Rochefort.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a quick question to follow up on the questions of my colleague.

You spoke about reports. Are there any reports that tabulate complaints that come from the public regarding the government's advertising?

[Bill Matthews]

I should have mentioned in the first answer that this is another key mechanism of ensuring advertising is non-partisan. A complaints mechanism does exist.

James, I don't know if we do public reporting on complaints, but I'm sure you do.

[James Stott, Assistant Secretary, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Thank you for the question.

Yes, we do have a complaints mechanism, as you asked about. It has been in place since 2020. We report on all the complaints we receive on a quarterly basis.

I can tell you that, since 2020, there have been five complaints received that we were able to take action on and look into. Four of them had to do with a campaign about firearms awareness, and one of them was about a campaign about dementia. We assessed the advertisements against the criteria for non-partisan advertisements. In all cases, we found that there were no issues with the campaigns that were flagged.

I will say that we received, just recently, a complaint about advertising related to budget 2025. However, we checked our records. We don't have any record of advertising taking place around the budget in particular, but we shared the comments we received with the Department of Finance, as a matter of closing the loop.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you for that precision. Thank you for clarifying that.

Quickly, I see government working to modernize government operations and to thoughtfully integrate AI across the public service to help drive what we call “the digital transformation”. At the same time, there's also a renewed focus on returning to the office to work. Could you speak more about how these two priorities complement each other and whether you see them working together to support a more effective and innovative public service?

[Bill Matthews]

Thank you.

The office for digital transformation has been announced in terms of intent but not yet stood up. The details are still outstanding on exactly what that will look like. My understanding is that the goals for that office are about enhancing and improving service to Canadians, as well as allowing for more efficient service, better service and more web-based, technology-enabled service. That could result in improved service, cost savings or, ideally, both.

Among the obstacles we have right now to departments offering digital services are some barriers to sharing data between departments. This was something created by the privacy legislation, and this is being reviewed right now. That, really, is the goal of the office: to make the Government of Canada, from a services perspective, more technology-enabled.

That could apply to internal services as well. Maybe you would have been aware, at this committee, that the government has launched a new technology tool for translation, which has improved efficiency and speed on that front.

I'll be blunt here: We know that many departments are struggling to keep on top of access to information. That would be a very useful thing to look into there as well.

I would distinguish all of that from the government's decision around the return to office. It's five days a week for executives, starting this week, with an intent to go to four days for non-executives in July. That is really about getting the most out of the public service. The government has a very ambitious agenda and is looking at new ways of doing things. It's a philosophical choice, frankly. There's a belief that having the teams together in the office to collaborate on doing things in new and different ways leads to a better public service.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I think I still have a minute left.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Yes, you have two minutes.