More late-in-the-afternoon-on-a-Friday press releases from “Canada’s New Government”, as they like to call themselves. This time, the Treasury Board is announcing that it’s moving ahead, as promised, with new rules about the way advertising and market research contracts are awarded.
From the press release:
As part of its Action Plan commitments, the Government is amending the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada to:
- provide written public opinion research reports and to make them available to the public through the Library of Parliament and Library and Archives Canada within six months of the completion of fieldwork;
- add a statement emphasizing that the bidding process for contracting of public opinion research and advertising activities must be open, fair and transparent; and
- include a new definition of advertising to distinguish it from non-paid messages such as public service announcements and from collateral services such as public relations and events management
Harper made a big point of promising written reports on the campaign trail at an event in Quebec City in which he posed with $132,000 of cold hard cash to make the point that taxpayers had paid that amount of money under the previous Liberal government and yet received only verbal reports from the contractors.