Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 23rd, 2021

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

Not that I know of.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Please give a very short answer.

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

To my knowledge, there haven't been any. For all changes requested between the initial and final phases, departments complied with the requests.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blais and Mr. Berthold.

We will now move to Mr. Longfield for five minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for preparing the work we're reviewing right now, especially from the Auditor General's office and the continued good work coming from there.

Mr. Hayes from the Auditor General's department, what is the reason for this audit? I can remember that we're not reviewing policy itself, but we're looking at the reasons for having an audit. I remember campaigning in 2015 around the government spending money on advertising that could be seen as partisan. Was this triggered as a result of a new policy that came in 2016?

[Andrew Hayes]

With most of our audit work, we take a look at the commitments made by government and the criteria we can use. We identified this one, based on a number of factors we wanted to explore. Obviously the new policy and the new approaches that were put in place were a factor in selecting this audit.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

To stick to this, and maybe we could go over also to Mr. Matthews, looking at the training that's needed when you have a new policy coming in and then the follow-up work—and now that we're in COVID, as well—seeing that the training is happening and that the training is sticking with the people who are tasked with creating ad copy, could you comment on the completeness of the training process? I think in your opening statement you said it was complete, but I worry about how you stay on top of that once people have been trained.

[Bill Matthews]

I have a couple of comments, Madam Chair, and then I'll ask Mr. Blais to weigh in as well.

Number one, the key thing is the process, where to go and what path to follow. It's a relatively small team of roughly six people with a low turnover, so you don't have a high-turnover job, which would be a concern in refreshing training. It is a matter of making sure they use the tools and the checklists.

Jean-Pierre, you may want to add some comments on how you ensure that knowledge is kept current.

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

It is a small team, so the training risks are small. However, if people were to move in and out, we would do the targeted training for those individuals as they joined the team. There's deep expertise there and very little churn.

We do training constantly, not just for our team but also more broadly on advertising. It's part of our duty under the policy vis-à-vis all departments and agencies, as well.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

You mentioned agencies. That's a question I had in governance of the agency. The Ad Standards agency is a third party, not-for-profit agency not connected to government. How do we know who's in that agency and whether they're government appointees working in a non-profit who could weigh in in favour of the government versus being non-partisan? How do we determine that an arm's-length organization is doing the oversight?

[Kelly Acton]

Ad Standards, which was created in 1957, is a national not-for-profit organization that has been administering the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards since 1963. Across the economy and society, they are the stewards of acceptable advertising in Canada. As a not-for-profit they are visible in terms of who they are. For example, the Government of British Columbia, in their oversight mechanism, is also using Ad Standards for their third party review.

Since 2016 they have reviewed just under 7,000 creative pieces for the Government of Canada in 120 campaigns on all manner of topics, from recruitment to health issues, economic action and so on.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's terrific.

With the very brief amount of time left, I'd like to go back to the Auditor General's department.

In terms of the risk-based analysis, finances are one big part of it, but are there any other risks you're looking at in terms of geography, targeting advertising into unheld ridings, as an example?

[Andrew Hayes]

I think that was the intention of our comments on the audience and the subject matter, timing, of course, being a third possible factor. As mentioned before, the nuance that can be inherent in ads can obviously target a population. That's why it's important to be sure that non-partisanship has been considered.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hayes and Mr. Longfield.

We will move now to Mr. Lawrence.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to split my time with Mr. Webber and allow Mr. Webber to go first, if that's okay with the chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Yes, please.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lawrence. I appreciate your giving up your valuable time.

I want to continue on with the line of questioning of Mr. Berthold regarding public complaints.

Secretary Wallace, you alluded to it in your opening comments. I just want some clarification here.

I'm watching an ad on television about COVID, washing your hands and sanitizing, and in the background there's a green bus bench. Clearly that is a partisan ad right there to see a green bus bench. Of course, that is promoting the Green Party of Canada and Matthew Green. That was clearly something that I would complain about, and I would send it in.

I understand that I would submit that complaint online, but to whom? Is it clearly indicated on the Government of Canada's website where I can go to make this complaint and the process also? You've received my complaint. Who reviews it and who responds? Do you respond to the complainant? I see from the opening comments Mr. Wallace indicated that the review is posted on the site.

Maybe just give us some indication of what exactly goes on with a complaint such as a complaint of a green bus bench.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I support this message.

[Peter Wallace]

I very much appreciate the question. I'll walk through part of it and then ask Ms. Acton to supplement.

You are correct in that creeping in of partisanship could be fairly subtle; it could be very much in the eyes of the beholder. I think, as a practical matter, a Canadian would likely search partisan advertising or something like that. The Google search engine would likely direct them to the appropriate place in both French and English. From there, they would submit their complaint.

Kelly, could you quickly review the process associated with that if there were to be a complaint?

[Kelly Acton]

It would be a joint working group of ourselves within TBS and PSPC that would review the complaint. We would set ourselves a time limit of 10 days to review that, and the outcome of the review would be made public.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Give me an indication of how many complaints you received from the public in 2020 on average throughout the year.

[Kelly Acton]

I'm sorry, we have not—

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

I'm sorry?

[Kelly Acton]

We have not received any complaints to date.