An IAB Canada Elections Update
With multiple news outlets reporting today that the next federal election could be called as early as Sunday, with a September 20th trip to the polls, IAB Canada is busy preparing our publisher members to meet the registry requirements of Bill C-76. In a nutshell, the law states that all online platforms (as defined by audience composition numbers set out in the Bill) must publish a registry of all partisan and election advertising messages displayed on their platform including a copy of the ad itself and certain prescribed information. The issue becomes the “issue” ads which are considered political but can easily go unidentified in a fast-paced election and therefore not make it into the registry putting publishers at risk of receiving hefty fines.
Although we were hopeful that the law would look a little different this time around, COVID-19 had other plans and the efforts of the team at Elections Canada (EC) have been focused on conducting a safe election which is completely understandable. However, they did take some time for us today and joined our Elections working group in an extremely productive and collaborative discussion on what we can expect (which is more of the same) with EC representative Nick Gamache, Senior Advisor, also answering our IAB Canada member questions. Gamache remains sympathetic to the challenge and was quoted as saying that speaking to our “solutions focused” community is an ongoing priority.
The IAB Canada policy team also updated the group on our plans to continue our partnership with the Canadian Press so we can once again provide access to our IAB Canada Issues Tracker which is a tool that helps to identify potential issues in real time and is available on a subscriber basis. If you are interested in gaining access, please reach out to [email protected].
We also invite you to check out our Elections Resource page where we have compiled a list of resources pertaining to both the Federal and Provincial election legislative requirements including our Publisher Media Kit as well as our “Where and How can Political Ads Run in Canada” document. You can find them here and they will be updated accordingly as more information becomes available.
If you have any questions, please reach out – we are here to help.