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OTTAWA – Her children don’t read the newspapers on her kitchen counter. Instead, they look at their phones to find information.
That is the example that the President of the Treasury Board, Anita Anand, raises when she was asked about the federal government’s efforts to spread its message through payments to social media influencers.
She says she worries that actors trying to spread misinformation can do so more easily on the platforms where members of the younger generation, including her own children, spend their time.
Since 2021, federal government departments and agencies have spent at least $1.7 million on influencers, and influencer marketing campaigns and strategies, documents recently tabled in the House of Commons and publicly available contracts show.
It is only a fraction of what the government otherwise spends on traditional advertising.
“We need to evolve with the times,” said Anand, who holds the government’s purse strings, at a recent press conference.
Most of the social media money goes towards organizations that have public service announcements to put out about health, travel or other topics that are also fodder for newspaper ads or ads on TV and the radio.
Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada are all tapping influencers, or people on social media who have built large audiences and sometimes have a reputation for expertise on certain topics.
Not all departments disclosed their data in the recently published documents, citing a time limit.
Recent campaigns include ones focused on promoting the COVID-19 vaccine and food safety.
These are ripe subjects for misinformation, argued Anand.
“We are now in an age where people argue about what is true,” he said.
“And in order to be in the world of discussing the truth, we need to ensure that the work we do in whatever portfolio is disseminated in an honest and clear way so that Canadians can understand what their taxpayer dollars pays for it. “
Health Minister Mark Holland echoed the comments and raised fears of foreign interference, saying governments such as Russia are using modern technologies to destabilize democracies by questioning “what is and what is not true.”
It oversees the federal agencies that give the most to influencers, with Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada spending more than $1.3 million combined.
Influencers have been employed to deliver government approved messages on topics such as safe cannabis use, dementia prevention, sexual health and mental health resources.
“If we don’t use alternative means of communication, then we are going to be unable to connect people to those services and they are quite rightly going to be upset that they didn’t have the opportunity to take advantage of themselves,” said Holland. .
As the government turns to influencers for marketing, that doesn’t mean it’s leaving traditional media behind.
For example, Health Canada spent a total of $641,878 on contracts with digital marketing companies between 2021-22 and 2023-24, just 2.5 per cent of the total $25.7 million spent on all of Health Canada’s marketing and advertising campaigns over the same time. period.
The paid influencers are on a variety of platforms, including Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
They are also on TikTok, which was banned from government devices because of its potential national security risk and is under federal review.
The popular video app remains an important platform for Ottawa to connect with Canadians, including millennials and Gen Z, whom the Liberals are trying to court before the next federal election.
“We know that influencers are able to reach different sectors of the Canadian population through different media platforms,” said Anand.
“That doesn’t mean the decision regarding TikTok is somehow wrong. It means we need to be using secure platforms to spread the word about our policy and reach those specific sectors of the population.”
Other departments have also used unpaid influencers to help promote government messages by inviting them to some of their press conferences alongside traditional print and broadcast journalists.
That includes deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, who invited unpaid influencers to this year’s federal budget launch. Last year, there was a similar outreach, with YouTube itself playing a role in facilitating the connections.
“A lot of Canadians get their information from other sources,” Freeland said alongside her cabinet colleagues.
“And it’s our responsibility to make sure we meet Canadians where they are.”
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on June 25, 2024.
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The Ottawa job keeps spending on influencers. Liberals say it’s about suppressing misinformation that first appeared on Canadian News Media.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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