Pubdate: Sat, 18 Jul 2015
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2015 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Page: A12

STOP THE GOVERNMENT ADS

As regular television viewers will know, Health Canada is currently
running a series of ads reminding Canadians about the perils of
smoking marijuana. The ads are scheduled to run until Aug. 8. By
coincidence, that's just about the time, according to the latest
rumour, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be asking the governor
general to dissolve parliament, launching the formal election campaign
- - and ending the informal campaign that preceded it.

The same ads aired last summer, in rotation with - another coincidence
- - a series of Conservative Party ads warning that Liberal leader
Justin Trudeau's stance on legalizing marijuana would put pot in the
hands of young children. Government ministers insist, straight-faced,
that the Health Canada ads are nonpartisan: It's all about
"encourag(ing) youth to choose a drug-free lifestyle," Health Minister
Rona Ambrose said in a statement. Veiled political messaging? How dare
you!

The Conservative government's penchant for spending public money on
self-serving ads is well known - the $100 million spent promoting the
government's Economic Action Plan between 2009 and 2014 being only the
most flagrant example. But these latest ads are particularly
insidious. A program touting all the wonderful things the government
is doing for the economy is one thing - the propaganda value is
obvious - but who can be against health advisories? Even an oversight
system such as that in place in Ontario (before the Wynne government
gutted it), empowering the auditor general to vet government
advertisements for overt partisanship, would have trouble catching
these.

All the more unpalatably, the Health Canada ads have landed just weeks
before the writ. With the advent of fixed election dates, the pre-writ
period has taken on new importance as political parties, activist
groups, and yes, incumbent governments launch multi-million dollar
advertising blitzes before the regular campaign spending limits kick
in. Most government advertising must stop during the writ period, but
until then it's open season, which is why we're seeing those
anti-marijuana ads right up until the speculated day of the election
call.

Former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley has offered a
solution: simply ban government advertising in the six months before
an election. This makes a great deal of sense. It's difficult enough
regulating the parties, not to say the "third parties" - whose
unlimited pre-writ spending also presents issues. But if governments
can push partisan messages at public expense under the guise of
"information and awareness," the whole exercise becomes futile.

No doubt some government advertising is genuinely useful, and at most
times an Ontario-style oversight regime would probably suffice to
prevent partisan abuses. But in the run-up to an election, the balance
of emphasis shifts. The potential payoff in terms of influencing
public opinion is greater, as is the temptation to put up ads that
cross the line - and the imperative of weeding them out. As the
anti-pot ads show, that might not be so easy.

So why not just can them - not only during the formal campaign, as is
the case now, but during the informal, pre-writ campaign as well? It's
hard to think of any government advertising that is so urgent the
country could not do without it for a few months (and if there is,
exceptions can be made).

Fixed election dates, whatever their benefits, have created a pre-writ
Wild West that clearly favours incumbent parties. While an independent
review process would go a long way to clean up government advertising
in the interval between campaigns - if such a period can be said to
exist any more - a six-month ban before elections would seem both
necessary and appropriate.
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MAP posted-by: Matt