Amid all the calls to shop Canadian in the wake of threatened U.S. tariffs in the past two weeks, including an impassioned plea from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, you’d expect the federal government to be the last organization to be buying American products when Canadian ones are available.
But that’s exactly what they’re doing when it comes to advertising.
CTV News revealed last week that the Privy Council Office — basically, the central agency of the federal government, which reports directly to the Prime Minister — allocated up to $100,000 in advertising on Facebook and Instagram to pitch the government’s GST holiday campaign to Canadian consumers.
This ill-informed tax break has had next to no impact on the Canadian economy — if anything, it has been more of a pain for retailers to implement than a benefit to them — and should have been allowed to die a quiet death.
But if the government insists on shoving its failed policy into the face of consumers, you’d think it would use Canadian companies to do so, especially right now.
The federal government has been addicted to social media advertising for years, spending more than $53 million on social from 2019 to 2023. That is about 20 per cent of its entire ad budget, compared to less than two per cent for print media in the last fiscal year.
It took Meta’s draconian decision to pull news from the feeds of Canadian users in the summer of 2023 for Ottawa to suspend its spending with Meta. Better late than never, we suppose.
But to turn the tap back on, with Meta still at open war with Canadian media? In the midst of an impending trade war with the United States? When its CEO is openly sucking up to the man who launched that trade war and making its platform even more open to disinformation by turning off fact-checking? It’s not just nonsensical, it’s hypocritical.
We don’t fault Canadians for using social media — there isn’t a viable alternative to it (yet).
But the federal government has thousands of choices to reach citizens with its messages: local media outlets. And citizens want to see those messages in their local media.
According to a new survey just published by Totum Research, 65 per cent of Canadians want the federal government to commit a percentage of its advertising budget to Canadian news media.
And it’s not just because they’re Canadian; it’s because they trust the ads they see there.
According to the survey, 63 per cent of Canadians trust advertising in newspapers and their online platforms, while just 28 per cent trust ads they see on Facebook/Instagram. More than half of those surveyed (58 per cent) said newspapers and news sites are their preferred medium to receive information about federal government programs and initiatives, while only 17 per cent chose Facebook/Instagram.
“The Government of Canada’s decision to resume advertising with Meta is a real kick in the shins to independent publishers across Canada,” said Dave Adsett, publisher of the Wellington Advertiser and chair of News Media Canada. “Disinformation travels faster than the truth, and it sends the wrong signal to local advertisers when the government is rewarding a company that is unwilling to fact check information on its own platforms.”
“News publishers call on the federal government to follow the Government of Ontario’s lead and support the home team by earmarking 25 per cent of their advertising budget to trusted news sources,” said Paul Deegan, president and CEO of News Media Canada.
“Now is the time to choose Canada,” Trudeau said Feb. 1.
We couldn’t agree more. Now do it, prime minister.
This article first appeared as an editorial in the St. Albert Gazette. It is republished here with permission