HALIFAX, TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 2004
STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Ronald Chisholm
MR. CHAIRMAN: Being 9:03 a.m., I call the meeting of the Human Resources Committee to order. I would ask each one to maybe say who they are for the record, starting with Mr. MacKinnon.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: We probably have some more members coming as time goes on. What we have on our agenda this morning is Agency, Board and Commission Appointments. We have a few. There's Ms. Whalen.
MR. RUSSELL MACKINNON: If it's agreeable, Mr. Chairman, I will move the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Board of Governors en bloc.
MR. CHAIRMAN: En bloc sounds good to me.
Is it agreed?
It is agreed.
MR. MACKINNON: I so move Stephen Aftanas; Dr. Gabriel Fischer; Duncan Gould; Paul Kidston; Mary Lynk; James D. Nicoll; Martin J. Pink, Q.C.; and Susan Wakefield as members to the Board of Governors of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
1
I thought Mr. MacKinnon would want to do the next one.
MR. MACKINNON: I feel compelled to move this rather distinguished nomination here. (Interruptions)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, maybe he's going to vote against it.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I so move Mr. Ken MacAskill as a member to the Board of Governors of the Gaelic College Foundation.
MR. BROOKE TAYLOR: Just a question (Interruptions) Go ahead, honourable member.
MR. FRANK CORBETT: Mr. Chairman, for the record, if the appointment gets another appointment, say to Lieutenant Governor, does he have to relinquish that position? (Laughter)
MR. MACKINNON: I will be asking Mr. MacAskill when he confers with (Interruptions)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Somebody can deal with that at a later date. Mr. Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: Just on the motion, I would just like to speak in support of the motion, Mr. Chairman, not at any great length or anything, but I have had the real honour of knowing the very fine gentleman, Kenneth MacAskill, for years and years it seems. Although he is a Liberal and at least a former Liberal MLA, he was and will continue to be a gentleman who we all can look to with a lot of respect and be very proud of our support here this morning for Mr. Kenneth MacAskill.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Corbett.
MR. CORBETT: I would like to, from our Party's perspective, also agree with Mr. Taylor on this because he has not only been an esteemed colleague of ours but also one who many times would actually read resolutions in Gaelic in the House, so I think it's a very appropriate appointment and clearly one we have great joy in supporting.
MR. CHAIRMAN: He is very qualified for the position and I think everybody is in concurrence so we will entertain the question.
Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I so move Gordon Harmer as a member to the Heritage Property Advisory Council.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Are you ready for the question? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I so move Sharon Reid as a commissioner to the Sherbrooke Restoration Commission.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Are you ready for the question? Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
I believe that concludes the appointments. We have Communications Nova Scotia coming in around 9:30 a.m.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, the next meeting date, that schedule is accurate and correct, July 27th?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, that will be the last Tuesday. Maybe we can take a break. If it is agreeable with everyone, we will take a break until Communications Nova Scotia arrives.
[9:07 a.m. The committee recessed.]
[9:33 a.m. The committee reconvened.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: We'll call the meeting back to order. A few of our members have to leave a bit early, so we will get things started again. With us, we have a couple of people from Communications Nova Scotia. I would like to welcome, on behalf of the committee, Ms. Mariam Murray, Director of Media Services, as well as Mr. David Bell, Coordinator of Advertising. I guess the reason for bringing you in today was to discuss the issues of advertising for ABCs. We welcome you. You can start your presentation.
MS. MARIAM MURRAY: While David sets up, I will extend our thanks for inviting us here today. We're always very happy to get out and talk to people about how we can better provide service, or provide better service.
Our understanding of the focus of our being here today is that the committee felt or feels that the distribution of your ABC ad is not as far-reaching as perhaps it should be. You want to have a direction as to other avenues of advertising that you may explore, especially in affirmative action areas; the current distribution of the ad and the circulation of specific daily and weekly newspapers, as well as special publications, is something you're interested in; the cost of advertising in these publications and what your budget is now, and what you would likely be looking at spending if we broaden this using traditional advertising; suggestions to reach people who want to self-identify as affirmative action candidates; and we're going to talk about other non-traditional ways, maybe, that we can suggest to you to reach your audience as opposed to paid advertising.
David has prepared a Power Point presentation, and he's going to take you through where we were over the years, where we are now and some suggestions for raising awareness around the appointments to the agencies, boards and commissions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Before Mr. Bell starts, maybe we could go around the table to introduce ourselves to you.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Bell.
MR. DAVID BELL: My name is David Bell, and I'm the Coordinator of Advertising, Media Services. We will just wait for this to boot up here. You should have two handouts. (Interruptions)
The current advertising practice. This is a compilation of a variety of ads which have been used since the mid-1990s to advertise vacancies within the agencies, boards and commissions. You can see that there has been a slight change in format over the years. The first one on top, obviously, is for a single position. The next one would be a group ad which somewhat parallels our current practice, but broken down by departmental responsibility - I believe there are about 60 different positions advertised here - and then the third page, it was felt over the years that perhaps there wasn't enough description given so that qualified Nova Scotians would be able to self-identify and be able to make application for consideration for these boards and positions.
However, what's true with newspaper advertising is that the prices are very linear, you know, a half page costs, for example, $50; a full page will cost $100; whereas a quarter page would cost $25. The same is not true with periodicals, but we over the years have primarily been using newspaper advertising - the government always tries to do more with less - so there has been a bit of an evolution of these ads over the years. The next page, that was around the year 2000 when we actually changed the format to one which is very similar
to what we have now with daggers, asterisks, and the number of positions available, increasing in complexity, but also getting more information within each ad.
So our current practice, as it now stands, is to have the semi-annual and that's in the Spring and the Fall. The ad runs twice in the three highest circulation papers in the province, namely The ChronicleHerald, the Cape Breton Post and The Halifax Daily News. The ChronicleHerald has about four times the circulation of either of those. The Cape Breton Post predominates on Cape Breton Island, whereas The ChronicleHerald is the mainland paper and The Halifax Daily News, as I'm sure you're all aware, is primarily a metro Halifax paper, but still a circulation of between 27,000 and 30,000 strong depending upon the day of the week.
What we've also done within - was it maybe two years ago? - we started to put a link from the government main page so that people could go through the What's New section of the government home page and see the PDF copy of the ad itself and, most recently, now that the Public Service Commission has tendered out its Employment Opportunities section, the PDF ad, there are a couple of links through the Employment Opportunities as well as directly on the Career Beacon site itself, and that's in recognition of the fact that Nova Scotians are becoming more and more Web enabled, more Internet savvy, particularly those in the under 30 group. The approximate cost is about $10,700 as I've noted there and that goes up 3 per cent to 5 per cent a year as publishing costs increase.
The next page is an example of a singleton ABC ad which allows the department to provide much more information, but is also quite a bit more expensive. In order to control the costs, we've gone to the semi-annual bulk ad - an example which is up here, this most recently appeared, I think it was May 1st of this year. This ad is the one, as I mentioned, that previously ran in The Herald, the Post and The Daily News. This has 113 separate positions here with a variety of qualifiers, so people who are interested in applying for any of these agencies, boards and commissions need to scrutinize the ad fairly closely, particularly if they're new to the format. It is obviously quite text heavy. The font is very small to save space, and it requires interpretation. The tradeoff, of course, is to have an efficient, from a cost perspective, presentation of the ad.
The individual ABC which was the preceding page, more information, more expensive - and more expensive being almost $5,000 if you wish to run it in all the dailies and all the weeklies - almost half the cost of the bulk ad with 113 positions, just to display the single ad. It used to be, two to three years ago, we would run many of these as departments requested them. The practice now has been to discourage that somewhat and if possible, ask the departments to wait for the bulk ad, but if there's a sense of urgency to fill, Darlene would be able to fill you in on the criteria better than I. If the position of Chair is vacant and if a need is felt that it be filled immediately, then we will run a single ad. It also allows, if they're looking to solicit applications from a particular segment of the economy,
a particular part of the province, that sort of thing, there's about 26 community papers throughout Nova Scotia and we can place in targeted newspaper placements.
The cost of advertising for the full size semi-annual ABC. If we departed from our standard practice of three papers, as we've already mentioned, if there were six daily papers that serve the Province of Nova Scotia - the three main ones which I mentioned, but also we have daily papers in Truro, Amherst and New Glasgow - it would cost $16,200, assuming the same size, and the size increases and decreases slightly depending upon the number of positions.
If we wanted to do all community papers twice, that would be an additional $25,000, so already we're over $41,000, and then what we affectionately refer to as the "full meal deal" which would include the business publications such as the Nova Scotia Business Journal, the Atlantic Construction Journal and arguably, there are certainly many of these agencies, boards and commissions that could appear in specialty trade publications, other specialty targeted publications. You could spend up to, or indeed in excess of, $50,000, and that's just maintaining the same current format like that. Please feel free to jump in if you have any questions or concerns, anytime.
Just some background statistics which are kindly supplied by the research department at The ChronicleHerald. It's information from the most recent survey study they had from the CRA, which was 2001, but I think these statistics are illustrative of where Nova Scotians get their news. This would be general news; television 52 per cent, and one thing, I know that constantly surprises me, or perhaps not if you're a fan of ATV, is that ATV's Live at 5 show on any particular day has up to 55 per cent of Nova Scotians tuning in to that show; they dominate the supper-hour news.
[9:45 a.m.]
Newspapers, approximately 20 per cent and that can be broken down - 40 per cent read a daily paper on a regular basis and 50 per cent read a community paper regularly. There's a lot of strength in community papers. Not only do they have a tendency to stay around longer - they're on the kitchen table, the coffee table until the next issue comes out next week - they generally are read cover to cover. We support them regularly and when we can. They're very strong throughout Nova Scotia.
Radio, 20 per cent, and the Internet, 4 per cent. That figure is actually increasing quite regularly. One recent one that I saw was for Nova Scotians under the age of 25, and up to 22 per cent, I believe, use the Internet as their sole source of general information.
Similar statistics - where do Nova Scotians go to find job opportunities? - and not to suggest that the agencies, boards and commissions are strict job opportunities, but just to give you some comparison, newspapers are very strong, the Saturday Classified in The
ChronicleHerald is a very popular spot to go, but all of a sudden the Internet leaps up to 22 per cent. Mind you, these are figures from a couple of years ago, and then HRDC or other similar employment centres.
So, with that in mind, and on the assumption that Darlene would not like to spend a whole lot more money, what we've done is to look at perhaps a different way that you could spend your $10,000 or so in disseminating the information, making Nova Scotians aware of the vacancies that are currently available.
EastLink Cable network, is certainly not the only cable network in the province, but it's far and away the largest. They've consolidated many, many of the smaller regional ones. They go into 235,000 homes, which represents 495,000 viewers, which is half the population of the Province of Nova Scotia. Very cost effective - about $1,100 per week. We use this fairly regularly, it's good for driving people to Web sites, it's the "what's on TV tonight" channel, Channel 8 typically, half a screen is the static screen - they've gone to full motion a bit as well - but you'd have 30 seconds of audio like a radio commercial, but you also have the visual component as well where you can repeat a Web site, repeat a 1-800 number, those sorts of things. We found them to be quite cost effective, and also appreciating that a significant percentage of Nova Scotians don't regularly look at a newspaper, but perhaps those are the people who are watching a lot of TV, flicking channels to see what's on.
Radio is certainly another option. It would be hard to promote 113 vacancies and the cost is perhaps a little bit prohibitive - you're looking at approximately $8,000 per week for a province-wide radio campaign. What that would give you would be three 30-second commercials per day per station for a week, which would be 21 - 3 times 7 - exposures in a week. That's compared with the EastLink, which guarantees you one exposure per hour, 7/24. So you're looking at 168 spots for $1,100 per week.
That said, we have an alternative approach that you might want to consider. Use a combination of media. Instead of the current two hits with the large ad in the three papers, which is costing $10,000-plus, enhance the reach with the objective of keeping the cost reasonable. Initial print ads in the daily and community papers with two calls to action - that's the last page of the handout, we just mocked up this ad - is quite efficient from a size perspective, because that would run full width in most of the papers and, as such, the newspapers would, just because of the way they lay out their pages, that would either run as a header or a footer. Regardless, it would be a high-profile position, but the cost would be reasonable, reasonable for that teaser ad, so-called, to run in all six dailies, you're looking at $1,600, basically.
What we suggest would be a good approach would be to have your three calls to action, to go to the Web site, because there's a stronger Web presence every time we run these ads - that would be the government Web site - for a complete listing of the vacancies, visit the local Access Centres. We're very strong on driving people to the Nova Scotia
Access Centres for a variety of services, for more information, and then also to refer to The Herald and the Cape Breton Post, and I'm suggesting perhaps we could drop The Daily News from the mix and just have a particular date, two weeks in advance, for the bulk listing, such as we're used to running.
In conjunction with that, run the EastLink ads for two weeks prior to the bulk ad, with the same three messages. Coincidentally with the teaser ad, the EastLink ads would start, and hopefully we would be able to get some earned media, there would be a few press releases that would go out and we could have some pickup. There would be at least a general awareness during the two-week campaign on EastLink and in the community papers, and then we would have our one insert, a semi-annual bulk ad, in The Herald and the Cape Breton Post.
The cost to the revised plan, the teaser ad, all papers, that would be all dailies, as well as all community papers, they've been pretty much shut out of the advertising in the last little while, but we could run this teaser in all papers, two weeks of the Eastlink cable ads at $1,100 a week is $2,200, and one insertion, the bulk ad, in The Herald and the Cape Breton Post is just under $4,000. That gives us a total of $11,600 and change, which is approximately $1,000 more than what is presently being spent.
The results: reach more Nova Scotians, multiple media, increase their frequency of the message, one of the basic tenets of advertising, increase your reach, increase your frequency. Hopefully, you will increase your response, if people are truly interested in your message. Minimal cost increase, approximately 10 per cent, as I mentioned, and more applications, and that's with a big qualification, hopefully from more qualified Nova Scotians.
MS. MURRAY: If I might just add one additional item, we also discussed, because you had said there are people you feel aren't being reached now, that you would like to reach, people who might self-identify or people from minority groups, we thought that if we could do links from the Web sites of the Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the Disabled Persons Commission, the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs, from already-established government sites, we could do links which would take them right from there to the large bulk ad, it might generate some more interest from those people you're trying to reach.
MR. BELL: One thing that Darlene and I had talked about a couple of years ago, and there was some interest at the departmental level, I don't know if it was technical issues or just people being too busy, but, certainly, when the bulk ad is presented on the government home page site or wherever, it's not a great leap of technology to have hotlinks from the job listings to the relevant government department where there could be more explanation, such as is given in the singleton ads. I believe a couple of departments expressed interest in doing that, but for one reason or another it didn't come together. The technology is there, certainly
the Internet is here to stay, and it's something that perhaps with a little bit of foresight and planning could be done, at least on a trial basis, to see what sort of traffic.
Also, I have to be cautious, we don't want to swamp the government home page with links, hyperlinks and you get traffic going hither and yon, with a lot of programming that just makes things more confusing than usable. There are certainly considerations there as well.
MS. MURRAY: So we're suggesting some alternative methods in addition to what you pay for, using the Internet a little bit more, and we find cable television a very effective way to reach people.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Some of my colleagues from the PC caucus have to leave early, so if it's all right with everybody - any questions, Mr. Taylor?
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I apologize. I do have to leave in about five minutes.
I'm wondering if there would be any consideration to forming a subcommittee to deal with the report we had today - maybe a member from each of the three caucuses to sit down. I think there's a lot of merit in the presentation and the suggestions that were put forward, but I'm just wondering, to give it the justice that it needs, maybe we could have a subcommittee. I'm not volunteering to go on the subcommittee, Mr. Chairman, but I would certainly offer your name if you would agree.
MR. CHAIRMAN: You would.
MR. TAYLOR: I thank the presenters too, it was very helpful.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we can maybe discuss that a little bit later. Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you for the presentation. It's very well conceived, you're clearly the experts in this field. I wanted to ask a question about a point you had made about if you put these ads in a variety of places and the cable, you made some comment about some pickup, there might be some pickup in the media more generally. I don't know if this is what you meant or even if this is in your remit, but would it be effective to have your department prepare a feature article that could go into the papers on what an ABC is and maybe what somebody does on an ABC by giving an example - profiling a person who's been serving on a board or a commission, talking about what the workload is like and the expectations? Just to correspond with this, that puts sort of a human face on it.
I know they are all so different, it would be hard to do but, as an idea, would that be an effective thing and is that what you're thinking about when you said there might be some pickup?
MS. MURRAY: Your suggestion is an excellent one. We could look at that in our office because, obviously, if you're not reaching the people you need to reach and getting applications from those people, we can help you do that through earned media, if we can, as opposed to paid advertising. We certainly can assign somebody to work with the committee and do some feature stories and regionalize them, do a press release before this goes out. I believe very strongly in not just paying to get the message out, but to try to do it through earned media. It's a great suggestion and we'd be happy to help with that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen.
MS. DIANA WHALEN: Thanks very much, I appreciate the presentation and getting a better sense of exactly how it is that we are advertising. It's a bit hit and miss when we do see those big ads. Frankly, I do think that the level of detail in it is so great. As you point out, it takes work on the part of the person who - you'd almost have to have an interest already to start delving into that very detailed fine print of the 113 different agencies, boards and commissions so I think a different approach really is called for.
I think the discussions we've had here at the committee, particularly related to gender equity and representation from different communities within our province is very important. That was one of the aims we're looking for, and if there's a greater recognition of the ad - and I like the idea of the banner ads - it would perhaps direct people to get further information, because it just allows you to be clearer in trying to capture their interest and then, if they're interested, they can go for that fuller detail.
The little asterisk and just the name of the committee alone doesn't often convey what they do. People might not recognize themselves as a candidate for that. I really do think it is time for a change. I think what we've said on the committee in asking our questions is this needs to change. I'm really happy to see the alternative that you've presented. You haven't just come to say how we're doing it today, you've been proactive in looking at another way to do it. I think the cost difference is really not very significant - it certainly would be well worth it to include more Nova Scotians in these ads.
As you mentioned, the real test would be if we try this, we could try a different approach and I'm certainly prepared to try the approach that you've outlined, and just see what the difference is in the number of applications that we receive at that point.
[10:00 a.m.]
I'm interested in knowing, through your office, what the total advertising bill would be for a year in the province. Are you able to provide a figure for the total, not just agencies, boards and commissions, but . . .
MR. BELL: The total amount of advertising which we place over the course of a year is about $1.2 to $1.3 million.
MS. WHALEN: The figure of $10,700 would be for a single run, right? You do this twice a year so it would be about $22,000, just for agencies, boards and commissions?
MR. BELL: Right. As I understand it - and Darlene, again, probably can address this better than I - Darlene does a tremendous amount of work compiling all of this information from the various departments. Each department would have several ABCs with vacancies. Darlene compiles all of that, sends it over to us, we put it in the format which Darlene then sends around for each relevant department to approve and then the total cost of the ad is then apportioned, depending upon what percentage of the ad they take among those various departments.
MS. WHALEN: So it actually appears in the different departments' budgets, not as one bulk amount?
MR. BELL: Well it's a bulk amount from us to Darlene and then Darlene bills the other departments from that.
MS. WHALEN: That makes good sense, as well. I had thought, too, with the different agencies, I really like the idea that we directly contact some of the other groups out there, as you mentioned, whether it's the Advisory Council on the Status of Women or groups that represent perhaps immigrant organizations, or the Black community, just so that we can make sure that we've done that extra, that we've gone the extra mile to bring it to their attention. I think that's really important and I would suggest that if we go that route, which I would support, that we ask members of this committee and perhaps others to suggest groups that could be notified. Again, with e-mail and Internet it is pretty fast to compile a list that you could send out and to keep it current. Would you agree that that would be doable, to increase that list from three or four to perhaps 20 or 30?
MS. MURRAY: It seems reasonable to me. Whether it's done through our advertising services branch or it's something that's done through the Committees Office, once all of this is prepared, that the Committees Office has a group of people that they reach out to in sending this, we would have to have discussions around that. As a follow-up to Ms. MacDonald's suggestion, what I would offer is that if you do strike a subcommittee, what I could do is assign a communications officer to work with you and come up with a plan, which would be a go-forward plan, and then you would actually have something in writing and laid out on a way to move this forward and reach the people you want to reach, in addition to the paid side of things.
MS. WHALEN: The question I would ask - just as my final one, if I may - would be, Ms. Murray, if you're saying that it might not be through the advertising office, is that
because you see your mandate in the office as being very defined? Is it just relationships with the traditional media?
MS. MURRAY: Sometimes. Our advertising services group are three people who do all of the advertising for government so, if we were going to start to maintain databases and reaching groups directly, it can, I think, become cumbersome. It's something that I wouldn't commit to until we had time to have a really good look at it because I'm just not sure we would be able to maintain it at the level it should be maintained.
MR. BELL: If I may, when you suggest additional media, we deal with media far beyond the scope of just the dailies and the community papers throughout Nova Scotia. There are limited opportunities to place paid advertising in publications which specifically target some of the groups which you suggest you would like to get in touch with. Touch Base is one we certainly deal with on a regular basis. The incremental cost to run a copy of an ad in Touch Base would be somewhere in the order of $750 to run the group ad and it would be maybe $150 to $175 for the teaser ad - there would be no difficulty there.
The only difficulty, if it were going to a publication like Touch Base, then you are starting to segment your market somewhat more finely and other publications that perhaps felt that they specifically addressed a finely targeted section of the province might say well if them, then why not us, and then we're starting to snowball a little bit into the $50,000 scenario.
MS. WHALEN: I know there are others who want to ask questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Corbett.
MR. CORBETT: Dave, are you directly responsible for the buy? Do you do the buy yourself? If you're placing an ad in the Cape Breton Post, do you call advertising there? Do you do it directly?
MR. BELL: Yes, that's correct. Our client, in this case, Darlene, contacts us and says it's that time of year again, I have the information. She forwards the information to us. We have a graphic designer on staff who puts it in what has become the standard format with the adjustments that are necessary to make it fit, different papers, different columns, there are mechanical specification issues that vary from one publication to the next, and we worry about all of those details. We prepare a proof copy, which we will then send to Darlene. She reviews it herself, sends it around to her clients and when everyone is satisfied that the information is accurate and complete, we then contact the Cape Breton Post, make a reservation, say we have an ad that's yay by yay, we'd like it to run on a particular day, they reserve that space for us. We arrange delivery to them. They bill us. We pay them directly and then we bill Darlene.
MR. CORBETT: Okay, thank you. You had mentioned in your presentation that you would use some stats that were supplied by either the circulation department or the research department at The ChronicleHerald. Since you're doing direct media buys, do you use outside sources? Do you subscribe to the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement, or any of those to get numbers that are fresh? We see television buys now as - you had mentioned that Live at 5 has a 55 per cent reach, but yet it may be more cost effective for you to advertise on Global's 6' o'clock news because their market shows that they have the 25 to 45 category.
MR. BELL: No, your point is well taken. We don't subscribe to BBM, it's quite expensive, but we do subscribe to an industry bible, called CARD and that is more for the print industry. Any information that we require, BBM, Bureau of Broadcast Measurement, is for television and radio, and any information that we require, our sales reps, our points of contact at the television stations as well as the radio stations, are very happy to provide that information to us.
Government advertising by definition is generally a pretty blunt weapon. If we do have a particular message that is geared to a Safe Driving Campaign around the time of high school graduations, we're obviously looking for the 19 and younger crowd, so we will request the latest BBMs for 19 and under, find out what the most popular radio stations are around and go from there. Unfortunately, the BBM, just because of the size of the market, Halifax is the only measured market in Nova Scotia. Sydney was measured last time, I believe it was 2001; Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton are also measured. The Spring BBMs were just out a couple of weeks ago. I was getting some research for another initiative and I was told that Halifax was the only measured market that they had most recently.
MR. CORBETT: The reason why I'm asking you that is because this is kind of why we're here today. We're looking for some form of inclusion and I suppose if we have a real measuring stick, like you said this is a pretty blunt object when you talk about government advertising, that's probably why we're here today, to try to file down the blunt end of that object, to make sure that we're reaching the segment markets so that we can draw these people in and, you know, I think part of it would be to be able to follow where these people are at.
MR. BELL: Yes, at least get their attention.
MR. CORBETT: And whether it's BBM or CARD, I think it's important that we have that type of research because, you know, the other side of it, don't forget, if I'm an ad executive at ATV, or I'm pitching to you and I'm going to interpret the data so I can get the sales I need.
MR. BELL: Yes, I'm certainly not naive enough to realize that the figures are not embellished somewhat which is why I generally go to at least two conflicting sources and
pick the middle ground, but one thing I think we should appreciate from this proposal is that we're not suggesting running 30-second spots on Global or ATV supper hour news.
MR. CORBETT: Yes.
MR. BELL: And a 30-second spot on ATV, Live at 5, you're looking at the better part of $600 per 30-second spot. You can gobble up a lot of money quite quickly, not to mention production costs on top of that. So for our television portion of this proposal, it's just for EastLink itself which by definition, satellite people, who still enjoy the glory of free broadcast stations, you know, through the benefit of rabbit ears, they're excluded.
MS. MURRAY: If I just may add onto that because David did use the CRA report here, but it was just by way of example because we do reach out whenever we're going to place and look within the budget, how can we reach the most people that you need to reach. So that's why we're coming back with another proposal today, using some alternative methods for that.
MR. CORBETT: And I appreciate, just one comment and then move on. The fact is, like I know, my riding would sit in one of those that has no EastLink services. It's privately held, or a different company.
MS. MURRAY: And we can advertise on those as well.
MR. CORBETT: Yes, okay.
MR. BELL: We can and we have. Would Rush be your cable supplier by chance?
MR. CORBETT: No Seaside.
MR. BELL: Seaside, okay, typically they have 15 seconds static, no audio on theirs.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think we should go to Mr. Glavine.
MR. LEO GLAVINE: Thank you very much for the presentation. It was very informative indeed. I guess, like my colleague here, Ms. MacDonald, perhaps from the questions that people have asked me about agencies, boards and commissions, I certainly have that distinct conclusion that there's not as much knowledge out there as we may think about these positions from that perspective. I've often said to a few people, and I think of particular people in the agricultural community that I represent, Kings West, and I said, gee, you know, you would make an excellent member of a board or of a commission, realizing their capabilities, but they see this as the jurisdiction of the professional domain and they don't often see themselves, that yes, I guess I could be on a board and have a good input and I am able to analyze things, you know, quite readily.
I think that kind of view is sometimes centred around this, when people take that view - yes, somebody on the hospital board will be applying or somebody who's already on boards - it's that kind of mindset about it. I think some exploration and time on a little bit of the nature of the board and the role and the people who are on it because it should be available and open to all Nova Scotians. I think some of it, again, is that, well, this is a bit of a closed shop, it's for the professional members of our society and I know that's not the case, but that's a perception that's very strong.
MR. BELL: And an effort is made on some of the small qualifiers to be members at large and so on.
MR. GLAVINE: Yes, good.
MR. BELL: But again you have to read all those words and appreciate them.
MR. GLAVINE: So it's more of a comment perhaps than a question.
MR. BELL: Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Massey.
MS. JOAN MASSEY: Yes, I agree with a lot of the things that have been said here this morning and I don't want to be negative, but the best way to move ahead, I guess, is to point some things out that maybe I've noticed. I have actually applied to be on an ABC a few years ago. I found it interesting, knowing what I know now and, for example, today we had 25, I think, respondents to these applications for 11 vacancies. So 25 respondents out of 11 vacancies is not that great and if we're only getting in these small amounts of respondents, I'm just wondering why, on these, we can't have a telephone number and actually a real person who people could talk to. When I look through these examples today, there's no phone number on any of them. The e-mail address isn't on all of them either. To make it more people friendly. I know that when you do apply, you get your letter back that says you won't be hearing back from us again unless you're actually successful, so no one ever calls you, there's no talking to a real person. I think if you're going to move forward, that might be a place to start.
[10:15 a.m.]
Also, as far as advertising, I think it needs to be more visually friendly. It's government, for sure, when you look at it, and that can throw some people off, who have never been involved in maybe volunteering at any level at all. It's all about getting on these things and volunteering. Most of them don't offer any remuneration, some do.
I left the room for a few moments, so I apologize if I missed something, but I'm just interested in the talk around the Internet and I need some more details on how we're actually utilizing that, as far as Web site access. We don't have hotlinks now, or we do, or were you thinking of setting those up?
MS. MURRAY: I guess I'm not sure that it's our mandate to say to the committee - what we would say is, we have a suggestion that you might want to look at in doing this. When you said you wanted to reach people in the women's groups, for instance, or persons with disabilities, perhaps having a hotlink to this ad, which is now on the government Web site, so if you have a hotlink from those commissions, from the Advisory Council on the Status of Women or the Disabled Persons Commission, it might help you reach more people. If they're on that site anyway, they would hotlink to it. What they're going to hotlink to is the full ad.
It's for the committee to decide whether or not they want to work with Darlene, who works with the people in the background to determine - when you talk about telephone numbers and links, we place the information we get from here. That would be something you would go back to Darlene on.
MS. MASSEY: I would think that as a communications organization, you would be making those suggestions to Darlene. I know there's a connection . . .
MS. MURRAY: A very good point. We're very happy to be here today, because what we're hearing, and it's great for us, is that there are some ways to improve here, where traditionally, in the past, we have received the information that's been advertised, and we place that information. Now what I'm hearing - and if we don't know this, we wouldn't come back with suggestions - is we don't get a lot of applications from this. From a communications perspective, it's advertising and now I'm broadening it into the larger communications field, can you give us some suggestions on how we can reach people. We're happy to do that. We can only do it if we know that there's a problem.
MS. MASSEY: As far as the mailing list, am I hearing then that we don't have a mailing list set up when these advertisements go out, but that it's a possibility that we will have these mailing lists set up? I think I heard you say that maybe it was cumbersome to maintain a mailing list. I would have to disagree with that, but anyway.
MS. MURRAY: Ms. Massey, what I was saying is now we're moving into another realm outside of advertising, and we would have to have a discussion with the Committees Office. So if the Committees Office is requesting that somebody develop and maintain a database of contacts for this, somebody would have to provide that information on who is on that contact list, who the appropriate people are. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, I'm just not sure that we should.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, a couple of short snappers. Has Communications Nova Scotia given any consideration to posting any of these ads, perhaps even if they have to be reformatted to make it a little more attractive to the eye, in the individual government departments where the general public does walk-ins, so they would see them on the bulletin boards or in a publicly-noticeable location that would attract the attention of the general public?
MS. MURRAY: It's not something we've ever been asked to do, but . . .
MRS. DARLENE HENRY (Legislative Committee Clerk): If I may, that is sent to each department.
MR. MACKINNON: I know it's sent to each department, that wasn't my question. I haven't been able to go into a government department, in the areas that I've visited and in many other jurisdictions, and see this type of ad on a bulletin board in a way that the general public would be interested. Let's say if you're going into the Department of Health or the Department of Community Services or something, you would see that - I don't see that. They may be getting them, but they may be going in file 13 somewhere, too.
MS. MURRAY: I'm not sure what each department does. Darlene may be able to speak more to that, because each department - it's my understanding - is responsible for the solicitation of people for their own agencies, boards and commissions.
MR. MACKINNON: Well, that's right, that's for the individual department, but I'm saying that because they are public offices, they're provincially public offices, if you were to go in and see the ad, I think it would have to be formatted slightly differently to make it a little more appealing to the eye, because, depending on how you format something, you will catch somebody's attention or it's a turnoff, either way. I'm no expert in communications, but I know enough that, for example, this type of ad, with the subheadings on it, it's far easier to read than the traditional type, where everything is just all blocked together in small print. It's like those ads you see on TV if they're trying to get you a bank loan or sell you a car - you can't read the fine print. There are too many words and that's what will kill you.
I think if something like that was posted in various provincial government departments, the bulletin boards, where the general public would access and read, like a notice. That's one point. The other point is . . .
MR. BELL: If I may, that's in keeping with what we were discussing earlier. With what was explored a couple of years ago having the individual hotlinks from, this ad would be presented on the government Web page, but rather than just a straight PDF version, easily readable on the Internet, you could actually go over any of these spots. They would light up
as a click-on link and that would take you directly to the applicable department and presto - there would be another paragraph or two of additional information, such as we have with the individual ads. These are the sorts of things that perhaps could be developed for each vacancy within each department which could then be posted to give interested individuals the information.
MR. MACKINNON: At the risk of sounding a little naive, what percentage of Nova Scotians have access to the Internet?
MR. BELL: Through CAP sites, in theory, they all do.
MR. MACKINNON: In theory. In practice?
MR. BELL: In practice? How many are on the Internet and how many are on the government . . .
MS. MURRAY: Actually, we did receive some information on that within the past couple of months and I could go back - I don't know right off-hand, but I could find that out at the office and e-mail you if you like.
MR. MACKINNON: The other issue is you indicated the total budget for Communications Nova Scotia is $1.2 million?
MR. BELL: No, that's the value of advertising space which we purchase through outside suppliers.
MR. MACKINNON: Is that exclusively for ABCs?
MR. BELL: No.
MR. MACKINNON: What percentage goes to these agencies, boards and commissions, $10,000?
MR. BELL: Well, we spend approximately $20,000 per year.
MR. MACKINNON: So that would be about 1.6 per cent of your total budget goes to advertising - $20,000 over $1.2 million. That's about 1.6 per cent of your total budget that goes towards advertising - how many boards and commissions do we have?
MR. BELL: There were 113 on the last . . .
MR. MACKINNON: How many positions altogether? Are there 2,000, maybe 2,500?
MS. MURRAY: About 2,500.
MR. MACKINNON: It would seem to me like we're not putting enough money into advertising for this.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I don't think it comes out of the Communications Nova Scotia budget. These ads are paid for by the individual departments.
MR. MACKINNON: He's just indicated $20,000 goes towards this.
MR. BELL: That is the cost of the media buy which we place, which is $10,000 twice a year.
MR. MACKINNON: That's separate from Darlene's budget?
MR. BELL: No, no. (Interruptions)
MR. MACKINNON: Okay, so you bill out of the $1.2 million?
MR. BELL: We pay first and then we bill with no markup to Darlene, who is our client.
MR. MACKINNON: Do you have a separate budget of $1.2 million? Everything is charged back to the individual departments. Collective . . .
MS. MURRAY: It shows as an out and in in our budget. We don't have a budget for advertising. We have that, we pay it, we get it all back.
MR. MACKINNON: Okay. So the total dollar value of Communications Nova Scotia that you expend on advertising and communicating on different issues is $1.2 million and $20,000 of that goes towards ABCs.
MS. MURRAY: The total amount of money that government spends is approximately $1.2 billion and the percentage that government departments spend on advertising for ABCs is just over $20,000.
MR. MACKINNON: What does the other 98.2 per cent go towards? (Interruption) I guess what I'm asking is, I know every issue that's promoted from a government policy point of view is very important, but is there a sense that perhaps there's not enough emphasis put on this financially as perhaps it could or should?
MS. MURRAY: I have no opinion on that, but the Committees Office says, here's our budget and we need to reach Nova Scotians. Here's what we have to spend, give us a
suggestion on how we can reach them for that, and that's what we come back with, whether or not we feel it's appropriate is not for . . .
MR. MACKINNON: As an expert in the communications field, do you feel that we, as a committee, as members of this Legislature, are getting value for dollar just with this $20,000?
MS. MURRAY: I wouldn't venture . . .
MR. MACKINNON: I would have to rely to a certain extent on your expertise.
MS. MURRAY: My expertise would say that if you're telling us that you're not hearing back from people you want to hear back from, that something different should be done and we're willing to help you explore what we can do differently. That's what I'm hearing - correct? - that you have . . .
MR. MACKINNON: Is this the first time you've heard this concern?
MS. MURRAY: Yes.
MR. BELL: Just as one for instance, there's the alternate scenario which we presented this morning, how you could perhaps expand your reach in frequency for about the same amount of dollars.
MS. MURRAY: If I could just make one comment that goes back to what you had said about maintaining lists, Ms. Massey. I'm not sure - and I probably shouldn't have spoken to say it's not being done - but departments may maintain their own databases that they reach out to, for instance, for any one of these. I'm not sure what individual departments do, so for instance if it's a board, if it's the Apple Grower's Board - and I don't even know if there is an Apple Grower's Board? (Interruption) There is? There you go. So Agriculture and Fisheries may well maintain their own database that they notify people. I don't know that. It could be decentralized.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Do we have any further questions?
MR. MACKINNON: Just in closing, I don't presume to take much exception with my colleague from the beautiful Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, but I don't see the need for a subcommittee. I think we as a committee can just give direction to Communications Nova Scotia. I think the intent is rather clear. That would be my suggestion.
MS. MURRAY: I will restate our offer. If you would like to have some communication support to work through a couple of alternatives, we can help you out with that and we're happy to do that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Very good. Any further questions? If not, on behalf of the Human Resources Committee, I'd like to thank you for coming in this morning and giving us your presentation. It was very informative and very well done. I certainly appreciate it and we'll be looking for your expertise, I think, at a later date to try to come up with some better ways to get our word out. Again, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much for appearing today.
[10:30 a.m.]
MS. MURRAY: Our pleasure. Thank you.
MR. BELL: If there are any other questions that might arise regarding the costs of advertising and so on, please, either individually or through Darlene, feel free to contact us.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, do we have any further committee business? Mr. Corbett.
MR. CORBETT: The next committee meeting is July 27th. Is there a chance of moving that to the afternoon, Darlene? Well, is there a will to do it in the afternoon?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, there's a will with me, I know that.
MR. CORBETT: Instead of having it at 9:00 a.m., have it at 1:00 p.m. or 2:00 p.m.
MR. MACKINNON: Just set your alarm.
MR. CORBETT: It means we have to come up the night before.
MR. GLAVINE: Just like this morning, highway work is underway now and some of the stops were 10 minutes this morning.
MR. CHAIRMAN: It's good to see the highway work, though. (Laughter)
MR. CORBETT: It wasn't in your area though, was it?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen.
MS. WHALEN: I have a different question, so maybe you want to do that first.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Is it agreed, 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m.?
It is agreed.
Ms. Whalen.
MS. WHALEN: I wonder if we could be clear about where we are going to go now with any direction on this advertising. I agree we don't need a subcommittee and I think we have an alternative that has been presented and a couple of good suggestions have come here from the committee. I really like the idea of the phone number being there, I think that's an important one right away. I would like to know when we are going to deal with this, but we don't want to deal with it today.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We could probably put it on the agenda for the July meeting. I think right now we just have the ABCs that we are going to be dealing with. Hopefully, we will have the whole committee there at the same time.
MS. WHALEN: Okay, that would be good.
MR. CHAIRMAN: At the July meeting we could deal with it and maybe finish it up by August and then be ready for the October . . .
MS. WHALEN: I realize the urgency isn't quite there because we don't do it until the Fall, but I would like to know that we've taken some action on it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think by our meeting in August we should have everything finalized as to where we're going and how we are going to handle this.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, for our next meeting, I wonder if it would be possible for Darlene to give us a sense of what the individual departments do around promoting the agencies, boards and commissions. If they maintain lists and they do some promoting of the openings themselves, it would be good for us to know that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The other issue, too, is Communications Nova Scotia volunteered one of their staff people.
Is it agreed that we invite that staff person to be with us at that meeting in July?
It is agreed.
Any further business?
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I think the other thing is the links, the idea of linking to the Web site. I guess maybe the Communications person coming next time would be able to help us with that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes. If there is no further business, a motion to adjourn?
MR. MACKINNON: I so move.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We are adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 10:34 a.m.]