Premier’s jobs- plan ads costing taxpayers $ 15 million
Marketing B. C. opportunities crucial in luring investment: minister
VICTORIA — Taxpayers are spending $ 15 million to advertise Premier Christy Clark’s jobs plan.
Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation Pat Bell said on Wednesday the government will spend $ 10 million running advertisements in foreign markets in hopes of attracting both jobs and investment to the province.
A domestic component of the jobs plan advertising campaign, which began across B. C. late last year, will continue in earnest in the months to come and will cost taxpayers a total of $ 5 million, he added.
Bell said both campaigns are key to the overall jobs plan, with the ads in B. C. helping to identify investment opportunities, and foreign ones selling those opportunities to the world.
“There are enormous opportunities across the province that no one knows about,” he said, explaining the ads running in B. C. direct people to a website where they can add their project to a government database.
“Unless you get people to fill that database with good information that you can then market internationally, you’re really not managing your affairs in a way that maximizes the investment opportunities,” he added.
As he presented his budget Tuesday, Finance Minister Kevin Falcon called the planned advertising “an aggressive campaign to promote our competitive advantages in key markets around the world.”
“We’ll be telling B. C.’ s story and inviting investors to be part of our success,” he said.
On Wednesday, Bell said onethird of the $ 15 million will have been spent by the end of this March. He said the remaining $ 10 million will be spent in the next fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013.
The government came under fire recently for spending $ 17,000 to advertise its jobs plan during the Super Bowl.
Officials said at the time the amount went to pay for two commercial spots, one that ran before the game began and cost $ 648. The other aired during the game itself, the government said, and cost $ 16,380.
The advertisements ran only in the B. C. market.
Documents released in December showed the government had, by that point, spent $ 866,697 on advertising for its jobs plan.
Until this week, the full budget and breakdown for the jobs plan advertising campaign had not been publicly available.
New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix said the campaign shows the B. C. Liberals have misplaced their priorities.
“They’re in a big deficit budget, they borrowed money to be paid in the future in order to buy advertising to brand the premier,” he said. “I think they misunderstand people.”
Dix added he believes the $ 5- million B. C.- based campaign is aimed squarely at trying to promote Clark and her government in the months leading up to the May 2013 election.
“At Christmastime, and in combination with the personal attack ads against me, they were launching jobs plan ads designed to brand the premier,” he said. “What utility did that have? I think the answer is very little.”
Bell did not shy away from the fact the ads will likely cast the government in a positive light.
“I think the message is pretty clear: We’ve got a jobs strategy; that’s what we’re hanging our hats on,” he said.
“We believe strongly that is the position that our party has going forward and we’re prepared to run on that.”