Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Comité permanent des comptes publics

For immediate release

Ottawa, March 25, 2021 -

The Government of Canada’s oversight of advertising was not sufficiently robust to ensure that it was meeting its commitment that public funds were not to be spent on partisan advertising, according to a report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts (the Committee) presented today by Kelly Block, Chair of the Committee.

In the spring of 2019, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada released a performance audit whose purpose was to determine whether the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and Public Services and Procurement Canada provided adequate oversight to ensure that the federal government was meeting its commitment to non-partisan advertising.

The audit found limited evidence that Public Services and Procurement Canada consistently and thoroughly reviewed all advertising campaigns with a budget of less than $500,000 (the established review threshold) against all non-partisanship criteria. For example, there was no indication that reviewers requested information to confirm facts and statistics presented in campaigns. Moreover, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat did not monitor the quality of the reviews of government advertising, and may have missed opportunities to identify and rectify weaknesses in the oversight process that the government put in place to ensure that advertising paid for with public funds was non-partisan.

As part of its report on this audit, the Committee made six recommendations to ensure that the federal government addresses these matters, so that Government of Canada advertising is always non-partisan.