Question Period Note: Government of Canada Advertising

How have rules around advertising changed and what is being done to ensure transparency and impartiality?

• It is essential that Canadians receive timely, accurate, and essential information about government priorities and initiatives.
• To support this, the Government has streamlined and simplified the advertising review process while maintaining strict requirements to ensure government advertising is non-partisan.
• There is also a public complaints process to ensure government advertising continues to meet the highest standards of non‑partisan communications.

In October 2025, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) updated the advertising review criteria to clarify and streamline the process while maintaining safeguards against partisan elements. These changes responded to operational challenges identified by departments and to evolving information needs in a more uncertain global environment.
Key updates include:
• Greater flexibility:
The criterion to ensure that advertising is objective, factual and accurate was modified to recognize the subject-matter expertise within departments and existing responsibilities of deputy ministers and heads of communications in ensuring compliance. Departments now have the discretion to accept findings from Ad Standards. Departments are required to retain documentation to support information presented in their advertisements.

• Removing subjectivity:
The criterion related to self-congratulatory in nature was removed, as it was subjective, not well understood, and applied inconsistently. Furthermore, it did not directly align with the policy definition of non-partisan communications.
• Removal of duplicative restrictions:
An existing policy requirement prohibiting advertising before parliamentary approval or trade agreement ratification was removed. This requirement already exists in the Directive on the Management of Communications and Federal Identity, making the standalone criterion redundant.
• Refined criterion on slogans:
The restriction on partisan associated slogans no longer applies when they originated from election platform commitments and are later incorporated into the official name of a Government of Canada program, policy, or initiative.
• 12 month pilot:
Changes to the advertising oversight mechanism will be piloted over twelve months and assessed at the end of this period to determine whether they should be adopted on a permanent basis.
Transparency and Oversight
These updates were communicated across federal departments and agencies in October 2025. TBS continues to publish the results of external reviews of government advertising on Canada.ca, including departmental responses.
A public complaints mechanism also remains in place, allowing Canadians to raise concerns about potential partisan government advertising.

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