Taxpayers are picking up the tab for a quarter of a million dollars on average each year to hire photographers to take pictures of ministers making announcements. Since 2006, the government has commissioned outside photographers to record more than 2,483 events.
That amount jumped 68 per cent to nearly $500,000 in the year leading up to the 2011 federal election, fuelled by a 38 per cent increase in the number of photo ops.
Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said there should be a policy or fixed rates for government departments to follow when it comes to photo costs.
“It would certainly be helpful to have some guidelines.”
Wudrick said some spending on photography is necessary but he gets concerned when the totals start to exceed six figures.
“Now that we now live in an age where the technology for taking high quality photographs is omnipresent and quite cheap, do we really need to have professional photographers on hand the way we did 10 or 20 years ago? I don’t know if we do.”
The $2.3 million in spending revealed by the government may be just the tip of the iceberg.
The 686 pages of figures quietly tabled in the House of Commons in response to an order paper question have significant gaps, often missing entire years. For example, the Finance Department didn’t supply any spending figures for the years prior to 2013, even though its website shows that in 2012 there were 88 pictures of former finance minister Jim Flaherty or former minister of state Ted Menzies making announcements or meeting with dignitaries and there were 127 photos taken in 2011.
The Justice department maintained that it has not hired any outside photographers to record ministerial announcements since 2006.
The Public Safety Department reported 217 photo shoots since 2006 but maintained that it could not isolate the costs for photography from its press release costs. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), which also had 217 photo assignments, spent $142,311 during the same period.
Nor does the total include the cost of staff photographers like those at the Department of National Defence or Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office. While past prime ministers have generally had a single official photographer, Harper currently has three.
“This is the most narcissistic prime minister and narcissistic government that Canada has ever, ever had,” said Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, who had submitted the question that led to the spending being revealed.
“They are completely immersed in self-promotion. If it’s not photo ops through photography, it’s self-promotion through advertising.”
Valeriote, who serves as the Liberals’ veterans affairs critic, sharply criticized the Veterans Affairs Department for spending $118,200 on photographing ministerial announcements at the same time as it has been cutting front-line services to Canadian veterans.
“They could have spent that on veterans and instead, they chose to spend it on things like these photos and other photo opportunities.”
“It’s a waste – it’s an absolute waste,” he added, pointing out the $2.3 million spent on photographing Conservative ministers could have been used to help keep veterans affairs offices open.
“This government will spend anything it can to make itself look good and for me, because I’m the veterans critic, it is abhorrent, distasteful, it’s completely inappropriate that they would do this at the expense of closing veterans offices across our country.”
NDP critic Charlie Angus said the spending on ministerial photography showed “disrespect for ordinary citizens’ hard-earned money.”
“This government is shameless when it comes to using taxpayers money for relentless, over the top, push, push, push for promotion for spin and propaganda,” said Angus. “Then they turn around and tell everybody else that the cupboard is bare.”
Angus said he was particularly concerned by the “huge increase” in photography spending in the lead-up to the 2011 election.
“Is it going to be the same in the lead-up to this election?” he asked. “I would imagine the numbers will probably come out spiking a second time.”
Angus also took aim at the tab for taking pictures of Jason Kenney – first in citizenship and immigration, then in employment and skills development.
Kenney in silk
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has spent more than $2.3 million to photograph Conservative cabinet ministers since it came to power, iPolitics has learned.
Below:
Check the data
Costing the ministerial photo habit
Counting the photo shoots
Ministers take the darndest photos
Taxpayers are picking up the tab for a quarter of a million dollars on average each year to hire photographers to take pictures of ministers making announcements. Since 2006, the government has commissioned outside photographers to record more than 2,483 events.
That amount jumped 68 per cent to nearly $500,000 in the year leading up to the 2011 federal election, fuelled by a 38 per cent increase in the number of photo ops.
Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said there should be a policy or fixed rates for government departments to follow when it comes to photo costs.
“It would certainly be helpful to have some guidelines.”
Wudrick said some spending on photography is necessary but he gets concerned when the totals start to exceed six figures.
“Now that we now live in an age where the technology for taking high quality photographs is omnipresent and quite cheap, do we really need to have professional photographers on hand the way we did 10 or 20 years ago? I don’t know if we do.”
Check the DataThe $2.3 million in spending revealed by the government may be just the tip of the iceberg.
The 686 pages of figures quietly tabled in the House of Commons in response to an order paper question have significant gaps, often missing entire years. For example, the Finance Department didn’t supply any spending figures for the years prior to 2013, even though its website shows that in 2012 there were 88 pictures of former finance minister Jim Flaherty or former minister of state Ted Menzies making announcements or meeting with dignitaries and there were 127 photos taken in 2011.
The Justice department maintained that it has not hired any outside photographers to record ministerial announcements since 2006.
The Public Safety Department reported 217 photo shoots since 2006 but maintained that it could not isolate the costs for photography from its press release costs. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), which also had 217 photo assignments, spent $142,311 during the same period.
Nor does the total include the cost of staff photographers like those at the Department of National Defence or Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office. While past prime ministers have generally had a single official photographer, Harper currently has three.
“This is the most narcissistic prime minister and narcissistic government that Canada has ever, ever had,” said Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, who had submitted the question that led to the spending being revealed.
“They are completely immersed in self-promotion. If it’s not photo ops through photography, it’s self-promotion through advertising.”
Valeriote, who serves as the Liberals’ veterans affairs critic, sharply criticized the Veterans Affairs Department for spending $118,200 on photographing ministerial announcements at the same time as it has been cutting front-line services to Canadian veterans.
“They could have spent that on veterans and instead, they chose to spend it on things like these photos and other photo opportunities.”
“It’s a waste – it’s an absolute waste,” he added, pointing out the $2.3 million spent on photographing Conservative ministers could have been used to help keep veterans affairs offices open.
“This government will spend anything it can to make itself look good and for me, because I’m the veterans critic, it is abhorrent, distasteful, it’s completely inappropriate that they would do this at the expense of closing veterans offices across our country.”
NDP critic Charlie Angus said the spending on ministerial photography showed “disrespect for ordinary citizens’ hard-earned money.”
“This government is shameless when it comes to using taxpayers money for relentless, over the top, push, push, push for promotion for spin and propaganda,” said Angus. “Then they turn around and tell everybody else that the cupboard is bare.”
Angus said he was particularly concerned by the “huge increase” in photography spending in the lead-up to the 2011 election.
“Is it going to be the same in the lead-up to this election?” he asked. “I would imagine the numbers will probably come out spiking a second time.”
Angus also took aim at the tab for taking pictures of Jason Kenney – first in citizenship and immigration, then in employment and skills development.
“Jason Kenney is a perfect example of the brazen attitude this government has in power. As the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation he was howling for every dime that was being spent by the former Liberal government. He gets his hands on the pot of money and he’s blowing (money) wildly on promotion photos.”
However, it’s not just opposition MPs who have noticed an increase in the use of ministerial photo-ops to get the Conservative government’s message across.
Alex Marland, political science professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland and co-editor of Political Communication in Canada: Meet the Press and Tweet the Rest, says the image is rapidly becoming the message in political communications.
“In the past, we used to think in terms of sound bites. Now, we think in terms of what’s called image bites – little clips, little visuals and everything is going visual as well. If you think about how people use social media, if you think about how they use the Internet. At one time it was very text-based but increasingly it is becoming much more visual-based. Photographs and video are much more prevalent and this is happening very quickly.”
While the Conservatives tend to spend more money on visuals and advertising, previous Liberal governments tended to spend more money on public opinion research, he said.
Marland said the Conservative government pays so much attention to the pictures emerging from a ministerial announcement that photographers at times e-mail their images to a department as an event is unfolding and receive directions on how to change the angle of their photos.
“If you’re going to have a message get out there, it’s not about the written message, it’s not about what the person says. It’s the visual message, so how can you get the visual message out,” Marland explained.
In some cases, a change in minister appears to trigger a big change in spending, the data reveals.
For example, the Canadian Heritage Department generally spent less than $6,000 a year on ministerial photography when James Moore was at the helm between 2008 and 2013. After Shelly Glover took over in July 2013, the tab shot up to $28,532 in 2013 and $31,136 in 2014.
Health Canada generally spent under $4,000 a year on ministerial photo ops when Leona Aglukkaq was minister. Under her successor, Health Minister Rona Ambrose, the tab has gone viral, spiking at $27,165 in 2013 and $15,542 in 2014.
Kenney has been one of the most photographed ministers – particularly during his time as the minister responsible for immigration, multiculturalism and reaching out to Canada’s ethnic groups on behalf of the Conservative Party. In 2010 alone, Kenney was listed as the minister photographed in 66 of the 94 ministerial photo events paid for by his department. The Citizenship and Immigration Department reported spending on ministerial photography that year topped $150,000, which included photos used in two annual reports and its’ Welcome to Canada publication.
Employment and Social Development Canada, formerly Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, reported the highest level of spending. Between 2006 and 2014, the department shelled out $523,688 to photograph cabinet ministers – particularly between 2008 and 2010, when Monte Solberg and then Diane Finley were the ministers.
At times, the high cost of photographing ministerial events appears to be at odds with the nature of the announcement or the mission of the department. In 2006, the Canadian International Development Agency, which was responsible for Canadian foreign aid to some of the poorest countries on the planet before it was folded into the Department of Foreign Affairs, paid $1,000 twice in one month for ministerial portraits of then minister Josée Verner.
Later that year, the department paid $1,500 to have Verner’s photo taken attending an AIDS conference.
Verner now serves as a Conservative senator.
In 2009, during a conference to discuss ways to help Haiti – the poorest country in the Americas – CIDA paid $2,800 to photograph then minister Bev Oda.
A review by iPolitics of the 2,483 photography jobs reveals the government is also paying a wide range of rates for photos. For example, photographing a ministerial announcement at the ferry from Wood Islands, PEI, to Caribou, N.S., cost Transport Canada $75, while photographing former Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s week at the United Nations in 2014 cost taxpayers $13,113.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Elizabeth Thompson
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