Government Operations committee  Cossette Communication was not working for the government at that time.

Government Operations committee  Cossette has been around for some time. It secured its first contract as an agency of record with the Government of Canada in 2004. It secured its second contract last year, following a competitive process.

Government Operations committee  The contract provides for two reviews. Cossette Communications provides services to my group, so it provides corporate services and does all the media buying. At the 18-month mark—that's coming at the beginning of next fiscal year—we will hire a third-party media expert to review

Government Operations committee  There are different things at different steps. Before a campaign is completed, there is pre-testing done on several concepts. When you hire an ad agency, typically they'll present a minimum of three concepts. Those concepts are tested in the target population to ensure that the m

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  The overall process, the actual framework, remains the same. But as new things come up.... For instance, we heard earlier about issues around the Internet. I mean, there's new media coming up all the time, so we take care to review all of these things, to make sure our processes

Government Operations committee  There are--and it is kind of technical--different ways to purchase Internet. They have different cost structures, and they do different things. You can buy in a particular website, and that's easy, right? You buy in a website, and you know where you're placing your ad. The way th

Government Operations committee  That's a role we play at different stages in the process. When an ad first comes in to us, or when we work with a government department, typically it's at the very beginning of the process. When they give us a call and tell us, “We're going to mount an ad campaign”, the first t

Government Operations committee  That's right. So we work with them, and the major checkpoints at the different stages are as follows. At the contracting stage, before they enter into a contract, they have to send us what's called a “9200”. It's really a proof, a signature, that the money is available from the

Government Operations committee  Yes. I'm sorry.

Government Operations committee  For those specific things, yes; Cossette is bound to monitor the placements to ensure they are compliant with the instructions we've provided. I have to tell you, though, that they wouldn't necessarily.... What makes it difficult in this instance about the dovetailing is tha

Government Operations committee  Have we asked questions? Oh, yes, absolutely; we do it fairly regularly. About three weeks ago I had a meeting with the people from ARB in Ontario to see how they do things. We do a lot of verification with our colleagues.

Government Operations committee  We've not done a study that compares everything from A to Z. Usually it's on a particular subject. We've done it with respect to certain target audiences they've done. When we were preparing to renew the advertising agency of record, we looked at the way that other governments

Government Operations committee  There are some differences, for sure.

Government Operations committee  It would have to be on a specific subject, but there are definite differences. Some are more centralized than others. I can give you an example. In Britain everything goes through one office. One office does absolutely everything from A to Z for the entire government. That's very