In November 2012, the provincial government installed five signs along Highway 99 to announce that construction was starting on a replacement of the George Massey Tunnel... in five years' time.
There have been signs up ever since, so when a constituent asked just how much the highway advertisements actually cost, my office decided to try and find out. Naturally, it took a freedom of information request to get the answer.
The government says the 2012 signs were a necessary consultation tool that "invited public participation." According to invoices obtained via that freedom of information request, it cost $16,331 to have those signs installed, although printing costs were not disclosed.
The Massey signs that are up right now were a special order in 2014, and were a pricey $60,598 for production and installation. So that's at least $77,000 spent on advertising the tunnel replacement.
Of course we all know the signs were not simply a consultation tool: they were pre-election advertising targeted at commuters. Their primary function has always been to create some sliver of hope that while you might be stuck in traffic right now, there is an uncongested future awaiting you.
And it's the same story all over the province: signs with project start dates that are years away. These are then altered with the red, "project completed" signs that are slapped on top of the old ones.
These signs are a form of government advertising, and unreported government advertising at that. They are not included in the government's provincial advertising budget and cost details are not available to the public.
It's anyone's guess as to the total amount government spends each year on project signs across the province. Our office was told the government doesn't have information showing where all these temporary signs are located, and we've also been told they don't keep centralized data on how much the government is spending to print, install, maintain and remove these signs each year.
Based on information my office has obtained, however, the costs may be around half a million dollars or more each year.
According to Queen's Printer, an average of $167,000 was spent printing project signs in 2014 and 2015, excluding special orders like the George Massey Tunnel Replacement Project. Invoices we obtained suggest that at least as much is spent on installation, with removal representing an additional cost on top of that.
Half a million dollars may not seem like a lot when you're talking about $44-billion budgets, but it's still a sneaky way to keep government advertising spending off the books. Whether it is a prudent use of public money is another question.
