Madam Chairman, the publication in question is called “Services for You”. It was a national guide to the services available to Canadians from the Government of Canada. It was mailed last November to 11.7 million households in the country. The guide cost $4 million in total to print and distribute. That works out to 32¢ per copy to better inform Canadians of the many services that the Government of Canada offers them.
At about two-thirds of the cost of a first class stamp this initiative did provide us with good value for money. It provided useful information about tax reductions and benefits; retirement planning; health care; environmental protection; security, particularly in the wake of the events of September 11; Internet resources; and a variety of other activities.
One thing that was especially important about this particular distribution was that it was broken down on a regional basis. Part of the information provided was relative and timely with respect to all Canadians in all parts of the country and part of the information was directly aimed at subject matters that would be of particular interest to people in a particular region.
For example, in the Ontario edition there was information about cleaning up the Great Lakes and internship programs in northern Ontario. In British Columbia there was information about the Gulf Islands ecosystems and about certain local initiatives dealing with homelessness. In Quebec there were issues related to the environment, youth, the RCMP's drug awareness services and so forth. I could go through 11 different versions of the guide that tailored information to what Canadians in different parts of the country would be particularly interested in.
One thing that was important was that in every case the information included access to Government of Canada information and services, the 1-800 O-Canada line and the Government of Canada website. For anybody who is listening at this hour of night it is www.canada.gc.ca. One can get virtually every bit of information that one might want to have about the Government of Canada.
I note that in the market research we did with respect to programs of this kind we found a full 42% of Canadians saying they did not have enough information about government services that were available to them and were making requests for more information of that kind.