NDP calls foul on Tories over advertisements

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/07/2023 (840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba NDP is calling for taxpayer-funded government advertising to be pulled from billboards and front pages before the October election to level the playing field for parties vying for votes.

Opposition finance critic Adrien Sala described a government campaign, which touts spending and programs in the 2023 budget, as unprecedented in its scale and price, and partisan in its messaging.

“Manitobans have a right to expect free and fair elections in this province and they have a right to expect that a sitting government will not use public resources to advance their own partisan interests,” Sala said Wednesday. “Unfortunately, that’s not what we are seeing in Manitoba right now.”

The campaign includes a series of billboards and display advertisements that boast about spending on Crown prosecutors, road construction, tax breaks, community grants and a pledge to reintroduce an electronic monitoring program for offenders released in the community.

It also features the tagline: “real results.”

The NDP says the Tories are using the campaign to tip the Oct. 3 election in the governing party’s favour using tax dollars.

“That’s wrong,” Sala said as he demanded the campaign be pulled by Aug. 4, the pre-election deadline that restricts government communications.

Government departments and Crown agencies must not advertise or publish information about programs or activities in the 60 days before election day and on election day, under the Elections Financing Act.

Exceptions are provided for advertisements required by law or information about public health and safety.

Advertisements and publications that continue an existing campaign regarding an “ongoing or recurring program or activity” are also exempt.

On Wednesday, the finance critic wrote to clerk of the executive council, Kathryn Gerrard, to request updated guidelines on communications during the election period that incorporate the Opposition’s suggestions for improvement.

One such suggestion is to “ensure the current political party in power cannot use the resources of government to improperly advertise in a blackout period.”

The NDP also asked the clerk to confirm whether the government’s latest campaign will continue once the blackout period starts and during the writ period.

At the news conference, justice critic Matt Wiebe took a swipe at the Tories for their promotion of an electronic monitoring program for offenders, calling the advertisements untruthful. The information promoted by the government is not productive or helpful to Manitobans, he said.

Billboards around the Winnipeg depict a person with an electronic monitoring device on their ankle and carry the slogan: “fighting crime, tracking violent criminals.” In May, Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen announced Manitoba would once again use the devices after it scrapped the program in 2017 for its ineffectiveness.

A request for proposals was to be issued to find a vendor for the program, which has yet to launch.

“There’s a very clear delineation between honest government communications, which I think is the spirit in which that law was written,” Wiebe said.

“That is being abused by a government who’s desperate and is willing to do and say anything at this point not to look back at their record the past seven years.”

Sala said the NDP will propose changes to the Elections Financing Act and details will be shared soon.

The government would not say how much its “Real Results” campaign has cost taxpayers or how long it would remain in market.

The Tory government budgeted $375,000 to advertise $10-a-day childcare this summer, the Canadian Press reported last month. This past winter and spring, the province set aside more than $500,000 on the same advertising campaign. It also budgeted a combined $350,00 to advertise “carbon tax relief” cheques and its 2023 budget in March.

A spokesman for Finance Minister Cliff Cullen sent an email to the Free Press at 6:30 p.m. that said the government must advise citizens about the budget so they can apply for benefits outlined in it.

“Total government advertising expenditures this year continue to track below the 16-year average of advertising expenditures,” the statement said.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca