Stop the government ads

As regular television viewers will know, Health Canada is currently running a series of ads reminding Canadians about the perils of smoking marijuana. The ads are scheduled to run until Aug. 8. By coincidence, that’s just about the time, according to the latest rumour, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be asking the governor general to dissolve parliament, launching the formal election campaign — and ending the informal campaign that preceded it.

The same ads aired last summer, in rotation with — another coincidence — a series of Conservative Party ads warning that Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s stance on legalizing marijuana would put pot in the hands of young children. Government ministers insist, straight-faced, that the Health Canada ads are nonpartisan: It’s all about “encourag(ing) youth to choose a drug-free lifestyle,” Health Minister Rona Ambrose said in a statement. Veiled political messaging? How dare you!

The Conservative government’s penchant for spending public money on self-serving ads is well known — the $100 million spent promoting the government’s Economic Action Plan between 2009 and 2014 being only the most flagrant example. But these latest ads are particularly insidious. A program touting all the wonderful things the government is doing for the economy is one thing — the propaganda value is obvious — but who can be against health advisories? Even an oversight system such as that in place in Ontario (before the Wynne government gutted it), empowering the auditor general to vet government advertisements for overt partisanship, would have trouble catching these.

All the more unpalatably, the Health Canada ads have landed just weeks before the writ. With the advent of fixed election dates, the prewrit period has taken on new importance as political parties, activist groups, and yes, incumbent governments launch multi-million dollar advertising blitzes before the regular campaign spending limits kick in. Most government advertising must stop during the writ period, but until then it’s open season, which is why we’re seeing those anti-marijuana ads right up until the speculated day of the election call.

Former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley has offered a solution: simply ban government advertising in the six months before an election. This makes a great deal of sense. It’s difficult enough regulating the parties, not to say the “third parties” — whose unlimited pre-writ spending also presents issues. But if governments can push partisan messages at public expense under the guise of “information and awareness,” the whole exercise becomes futile.

No doubt some government advertising is genuinely useful, and at most times an Ontario-style oversight regime would probably suffice to prevent partisan abuses. But in the run-up to an election, the balance of emphasis shifts. The potential payoff in terms of influencing public opinion is greater, as is the temptation to put up ads that cross the line — and the imperative of weeding them out. As the anti-pot ads show, that might not be so easy.

So why not just can them — not only during the formal campaign, as is the case now, but during the informal, pre-writ campaign as well? It’s hard to think of any government advertising that is so urgent the country could not do without it for a few months (and if there is, exceptions can be made).

Fixed election dates, whatever their benefits, have created a prewrit Wild West that clearly favours incumbent parties. While an independent review process would go a long way to clean up government advertising in the interval between campaigns — if such a period can be said to exist any more — a six-month ban before elections would seem both necessary and appropriate.