The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) is the biggest buyer of partisan advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the country, spending up to $1 million on the platforms since news articles were banned.
“[Justin] Trudeau and the New Democratic Party's choice to fight crime is to legalize hard drugs,” reads a Chinese-language post on the Conservative official page.
The CCP paid Meta over $5,000 to increase the visibility of this factually incorrect post. It appeared on the screens of at least 10,000 people in April in Ontario and the Western provinces, data made available by Meta shows.
Au In total, the party has “sponsored” 1960 publications on its page or that of its leader, Pierre Poilievre, since last August. All were in English, except 150 in French, 7 in Mandarin and 1 in Punjabi. A compilation carried out by Le Devoir shows that the official opposition in Ottawa has sent between $760,300 and $1,059,340 over the past year to the multinational Meta, owner social media Facebook and Instagram.
On August 1, 2023, Meta announced that it was removing all news content from these two platforms in Canada, in response to the passage of Bill C-18, which was supposed to force the sharing of its profits with news companies. Since that date, the news media accounts have become inaccessible, and Internet users can no longer share articles on them.
Liberals critical, but customers
In response, the Trudeau government announced last year that the federal machine would stop all advertising spending on its platforms. The ruling Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) is clearly not involved in the boycott.
Including sponsored posts from the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau's page, the Liberals have had the most ads, totaling 3,845 over the past year. Just under half (1,690) were in French.
Their overall value is, however, less than that of the Conservatives: less than half a million dollars (between $107,400 and $497,655). The Liberals were spending more money on Meta ads every week during the 2021 election campaign.
1960 This is the number of publications sponsored by the Conservative Party of Canada on its page or that of its leader, Pierre Poilievre, since last August.
The most recent financial reports from the federal parties show that the Conservatives dominate the other parties in terms of income, recording receipts of more than $41 million in 2023. A fifth of this sum was invested in advertising, including $5.8 million. television, $668,000 on radio and two million for “other” advertisements. The Conservative Party of Canada did not respond to questions from Devoir on its advertising investments.
En For comparison, the Liberal Party of Canada took in $15.7 million in revenue last year, and spent the equivalent of 2.5 per cent of that on advertising, or $381,346, the balance sheet shows. which ends on December 31, 2023. “While we do not comment on our advertising strategy, innovative digital campaigns have always been an important part of how the Liberal Party of Canada engages with Canadians over the years. years and inform them of Justin Trudeau's positive plan to invest in the middle class,” explains PLC spokesperson Matteo Rossi.
Personal data objective
Many of these advertisements are designed to redirect Internet users to sites where they are encouraged to provide their personal data, a practice “used by just about every political party in the world” to identify its supporters, explains Sébastien Fassier, ex- liberal digital strategist and vice-president of the public relations firm TACT. “These platforms make it possible to target [its audience] very precisely, like a Chinese community around the issue of supervised injection centers, for example. »
Philippe Dubois, professor at the National School of Public Administration (ENAP), sees this as proof of a “permanent campaign” in Canada, with parties striving to reach voters even outside of electoral events. “Politicians have an interest and must join us to continue to feed us, to mobilize us. Social media is one of the best avenues to do this,” he says, while recalling that political groups still opt for traditional advertising campaigns.
Far behind on Facebook and Instagram, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and its leader, Jagmeet Singh, purchased 107 ads from Meta, spending between $49,300 and $68,893. That's a small fraction of his 2023 income of nearly $7 million. “Quebecers and Canadians juggle family responsibilities, bills to pay and daily challenges. This is why we are doing everything to reach them where they are and where they are getting information,” explains Lucy Watson, the national director of the NDP.
In Quebec, the Coalition Avenir Québec and its leader, François Legault, invested less than $25,000 in Meta. Québec solidaire, less than $10,000. Both parties have justified this spending by their need to reach citizens. The Parti Québécois and the Liberal Party of Quebec have not spent anything on Facebook or Instagram in the last year, nor has the Bloc Québécois, at the federal level.
With François Carabin