Ontario’s Liberals have taken a giant stride toward making elections fairer by banning government from paying for advertisements that promote its own party, but people are quickly finding a way around it.
The law Premier Dalton McGuinty introduced before the 2007 election requires a government to submit ads it plans in newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and billboards, and printed materials for distribution to households, to the provincial auditor.
This official, who has proven non-partisan, can reject any he judges boost the government’s political interests.
McGuinty brought in his law because successive governments over decades spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads praising their own parties, which gave them an advantage over opposition parties who have to spend their own money.
The most infamous included Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris in the 1990s plastering almost every refilled pothole on highways with signs that said “Your Mike Harris government is working for you.”
An earlier Conservative premier, William Davis, filled TV screens with the message “Life is good, Ontario – preserve it, conserve it,” with emphasis on the conserve.
The Liberals and New Democrats in opposition protested, but proved unwilling when they got in government to give up the advantage of being able to spend taxpayers’ money on ads boosting themselves.
McGuinty surprised everyone when he brought in his ban – parties rarely surrender something that gives them a significant advantage - and to his credit set up a system that has virtually stopped government itself running partisan ads.
But the law is not working as well as it should, because some grateful and perhaps hopeful recipients of Liberal government largesse are spending lavishly on ads praising the government and using taxpayers’ money to do it.
Ryerson University paid for costly, full-page ads in Toronto newspapers informing the government generously gave $45 million to further its dream of having a “student learning centre.”
The ads mentioned McGuinty and the local Liberal MPP, deputy premier George Smitherman, by name, and published pictures of them smiling, as well they should at this inexpensive-to-them self-promotion.
The University of Toronto took out similar ads proclaiming in huge letters it had a new state-of-the-art addition to its library “thanks to $15 million from the Government of Ontario.”
The University Health Network of three major hospitals in Toronto took out full-page ads congratulating two doctors who won an award to fund research that included “$5 million over five years from the Province of Ontario and other sponsors.”
Providence Hospital in Toronto, run by Roman Catholic clergy, paid for a four-page insert in community newspapers thanking McGuinty for a $6.5 million funding increase it said will help it hire 56 new staff.
It also mentioned Smitherman and a visit he made to the hospital – not every minister who visits a hospital gets his name in a lot of papers.
An association representing accountants paid for a six-page insert in a Toronto paper claiming it helps immigrants with skills in that profession find jobs here and provided space to two Liberal ministers, Attorney General Chris Bentley and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Michael Chan, to blow their own trumpets.
They assured they do all they can to help qualified immigrants get work, which probably impressed some readers, but there are doctors and engineers driving cabs who would dispute it.
These ads do not break McGuinty’s new law banning the province paying for partisan ads, because they are financed by organizations outside government.
McGuinty’s government may be encouraging them to give itself favorable publicity or those placing the ads may feel their praise will assure them of further government handouts in future.
But they break the spirit of McGuinty’s law and he should discourage this practice of recipients of government grants paying for ads praising a government for doing its job.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
