Mr. Speaker, in response to part (a), the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, FedDev Ontario, delivers programs and services to support innovation and economic growth in southern Ontario. Its mandate covers the region as defined by 37 Statistics Canada census divisions. Actively promoting FedDev Ontario programs and funding opportunities is part of the agency’s core business, and therefore the total cost of this advertising and outreach is not systematically tracked. FedDev Ontario concluded that producing and validating a comprehensive response to this question would require a manual collection of information that is not possible in the time allotted and could lead to the disclosure of incomplete and misleading information.
Details of travel associated with outreach activities by senior agency officials are proactively disclosed and published on the Open Government portal at https://search.open.canada.ca/travel/.
In response to part (b), FedDev Ontario makes use of free social media and regularly engages with stakeholders and communities across the region to promote programming and funding opportunities for southern Ontario businesses and organizations.
In response to part (c), FedDev Ontario tracks engagement and impressions on social media, traffic to the agency website, and application downloads.
In response to part (d), the agency does not have any specific targets associated with advertising and outreach. Reporting against FedDev Ontario’s key targets and results can be found in the agency’s departmental results report, DRR, at https://feddev-ontario.canada.ca/en/transparency/departmental-results-report.