Editor's note: This article origially appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website covering Queen’s Park.
The ads are ubiquitous — a narrator talks about a place where great things are happening and asks, "What if we told you, you already live here?"
They've been broadcast widely, including during the Super Bowl, Oscars, Emmy Awards and, most recently, the Grey Cup, paid for by the Government of Ontario.
At Queen's Park this week, the Ontario Liberals are criticizing the governing Progressive Conservatives for spending millions of taxpayer dollars to burnish the image of the government and party in power. Slamming the PCs over the issue in question period, and continuing the fight in a late-show debate set for Tuesday.
In doing so, the Liberals are acknowledging it was their party that weakened the rules that prohibited partisan government-paid advertising in the first place. They are now vowing to change that if they form government again.
"100 per cent," said Liberal MPP John Fraser, asked if the Liberals would tighten the government-paid ad law if they win the next election. "It should never have changed. I always believed that — I continue to believe that. I think the rules that were there were fair and reasonable."
During the Liberals' time in power, they passed — and then repealed — legislation that gave the auditor general the power to review government-paid advertising and block ads that have the primary objective of fostering a positive impression of the government from going to air.
"It's taxpayers' money, and if families are struggling, why would we waste money on trying to tell you that life was different than it actually was?" Fraser said. "Why would a government do that?"
The Ford government is currently running an ad campaign that fits that bill. According to a government spokesperson, the "It's happening here" ad campaign "is designed to instil pride in the many accomplishments of Team Ontario and confidence in the province’s economy."
The minister of finance's spokesperson, Colin Blachar, declined to say how much the province has spent on the campaign, but noted the auditor general still reviews ads against the standard brought in when Fraser's party was in power, even though they are no longer prohibited from going on air.
"To ensure transparency, total government advertising budgets are released as part of public accounts," Blachar said.
When the PCs were in opposition, they slammed the Liberal government of the day for running government-paid partisan ads and campaigned on a promise to restore the old rules.
"These self-congratulatory ads do not help people access service or require any action. They simply are meant to make the government look good," said deputy premier Sylvia Jones, then an opposition member, on March 22, 2018, in response to a Liberal throne speech.
After the PCs were elected, however, they abandoned that pledge.
This spring, the NDP highlighted that flip-flop by tabling a bill that was a near-identical copy of one Jones had spearheaded a few months before the PCs came into power that would have restored the auditor general's power to veto ads.
The PC government voted it down.
Earlier this fall, the PCs' campaign manager Kory Teneycke, spoke about the politics of government advertising on the Curse of Politics podcast.
On a September episode discussion of the prime minister's slumping popularity, Teneycke said the federal Liberals could improve his positives somewhat with party-paid advertising.
"I think the other thing they need to start doing is government advertising," he continued, "which is, I would say, in terms of volume and amount of money that you would spend, outstrips what you can do with party advertising about 10 to one. It's just such an important strategic tool to be using to — "
"I saw a spectacular Ontario government ad during all the sports I was watching this weekend — beautiful," interjected host David Herle.
"Well, I don't think you would see the Ontario PC Party where it is in the polls if it wasn't out telling its own story in a positive way using government advertising," Teneycke replied.
He went on to call political parties' ad budgets a "water gun" compared to the "fire hose" that governments can use.
"They can use the fire hose," he said of the federal Liberals. "And they just chose not to. They unilaterally disarmed and now they're suffering the consequences."
Fraser, when asked about those comments, said he thought they were "obscene."
"People are just struggling to pay their bills, put food on the table, to clothe their kids," Fraser said. "The government should be focused on that, and parties can spend their own money telling their story. Government advertising is meant to really inform people about a service or something that's going to help them in their daily lives. An ad to tell you that everything is just rosy doesn't help you in your daily life if you can't put food on the table, or you can't pay your rent."
In a column for The Trillium about taxpayer-paid-for partisan advertising, Bonnie Lysyk, Ontario's auditor general from September 2013 to September 2023, traced the battle over government-paid partisan advertising back 30 years.
"Although it was recognized decades ago by legislators from all three major political parties that the spending of taxpayer money on partisan advertising was not acceptable, we’ve nearly come full circle, with one remaining transparency mechanism in place," she wrote.
"While the Office of the Auditor General no longer has the power to veto partisan ads paid for with taxpayer money, at least it is still able to publicly report annual spending on partisan advertising to provide transparency on this value-for-money issue, while continuing to highlight that taxpayer money is being used for partisan advertising."
The next auditor general report on government advertising is expected to be released in the coming weeks before the house rises for the winter break.
—With files from Charlie Pinkerton
