Liberals’ social media spending tops $13.7M
The Canadian government has spent at least $13.7 million on sponsored social media posts since the Liberals took office, part of an ongoing shift away from traditional advertising.
Documents tabled in the House of Commons show departments and agencies’ use of paid promotion on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has ramped up considerably in the past couple of years.
These are “new dynamic ways to reach Canadians,” according to Transport Canada, and “the most cost-effective,” says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in the government’s response to a question from Conservative MP Blake Richards.
Amounts listed in the document cover expenses between November 2015, shortly after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals formed their government, and May 2017. Most departments and agencies that spent money on sponsored social media posts used Facebook — about 60 of them — while just under 50 used Twitter, and half that number used Instagram (which is owned by Facebook).
Destination Canada, a Crown corporation that encourages tourism to Canada, spent the most, with $4.3 million worth of posts targeted at travellers from specific countries including the U.S.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spent another $1.5 million, with the bulk of that going toward raising public awareness of a new Electronic Travel Authorization requirement for visa-exempt travellers to Canada.
The other federal bodies that spent more than half a million dollars are Veterans Affairs Canada at $867,100; Heritage Canada at $829,500; Health Canada at $762,700; Export Development Canada at $608,500; National Defence at $546,300; and Statistics Canada at $503,700.
The government targets social media users with a wide variety of messages, including federal programs and recruitment efforts.
The Privy Council Office spent a full $245,000, for example, on promoting a consultation on an electoral reform policy the Liberals eventually decided not to pursue, the online portion of which was met with criticism over possible privacy breaches.
Heritage pushed Canada 150 events this year while Health Canada has focused on cannabis education, tobacco cessation, opioid addiction and other topics. Public Safety tweeted about flood readiness and Transport shared posts about drones on Instagram.
The fisheries department sponsored quite a few posts about the beauty of Canada’s coastlines, while the National Capital Commission urged people to check out the fall colours at Quebec’s Gatineau Park, near Ottawa.
Smaller governmentfunded entities, such as Canada’s national museums, used social media to encourage visits to exhibits or special events, such as “Baconpalooza,” “kids pizza making,” an “ice cream festival” and “sheep shearing” at Canada’s science and technology museums. In one case, Parks Canada promoted a whiskey tasting.
Canada Post and the Royal Canadian Mint said amounts spent on social media count as commercially sensitive information, so didn’t share how much they doled out to Facebook and Twitter.
Richards said the morethan-1,500-page response to his question raises concerns about how much oversight the government puts on its advertising activities. He noted the Liberals promised during the 2015 election campaign to instate an “advertising commissioner” to scrutinize government ads, and questioned the government promising “openness and transparency” when no commissioner has been put in place.
The Ottawa Citizen reported a year ago that $3.8 million had been spent on Facebook ads alone during the first eight months of Trudeau’s mandate. Between 2006 and 2014, the feds spent just $5.8 million on Facebook ads.
The growth in spending on social media advertising is part of a wider shift away from advertising government programs in such traditional media as newspapers and radio.
A decade ago, online government advertisements were bunched into a category with outdoor ones and made up only 10 per cent of ad spending, according to the government’s annual advertising report for 2005-06. Print ads were at 52 per cent. About a quarter of spending went toward television and cinema ads.
In the 2015-16 year, print, radio and outdoor ads were grouped together and made up 15 per cent of spending, versus 34 per cent on internet ads. Half of spending was on TV.
The Public Policy Forum’s recent report on the state of Canada’s news media said it heard from stakeholders expressing “discontent” about the decline in government print ad budgets.