HANSARD
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
Mr. Keith Colwell (Chairman)
Mr. Chuck Porter
Ms. Joan Massey
Ms. Diana Whalen
In Attendance:
Mrs. Darlene Henry
Legislative Committee Clerk
Mr. Gordon Hebb
Legislative Counsel
WITNESSES
Communications Nova Scotia
Ms. Miriam Murray, Director of Media Services
Ms. Terri Aker, Communications
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HALIFAX, TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2007
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Keith Colwell
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think we're going to get underway. I call the meeting to order. We'll start by going around the table for introductions.
[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: I had my fingers rapped this morning for not identifying people, so before you speak, just give me time to identify you because the staff have difficulty identifying who is speaking and when. It makes it really difficult to transcribe the meeting. I've been warned and rightfully so. (Laughter)
Let's start the meeting. Where would you like to start this morning? We have a report back on what it's going to cost - do you want to start with that? Would you like to start with your presentations? Who would like to start?
MS. MIRIAM MURRAY: I am happy to start. When Darlene contacted us, she suggested that you were interested in getting some costs for flyers to do the advertising for the agencies, boards and commissions in flyers. We've put together a package, which I believe you have on your desk. We brought a sample of what the flyer could look like, based on the information you have provided. This is a flyer we had done for the Department of Education, Brighter Futures. I'll just pass that along, and you can have a look at it.
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Basically, if you move to doing a flyer insert of this type, to produce this would be approximately $15,000 for 270,000 copies. If you wanted to do a mail-out across the province, you would be looking at over 400,000, and the cost of this would be between $21,000 and $23,000 to produce this. Then the mailing cost, if you were to mail it via Canada Post, to the 414,000, would be approximately $45,700. So $45,700 plus approximately $22,000, $23,000 for production, to mail a flyer like this around. If you produced a flyer like this and had it delivered via newspapers, via the seven daily newspapers in the province, that would reach 195,800 subscribers of the daily papers. The delivery cost on that would be $11,000.
If you included a flyer like this in The ChronicleHerald flyer packs, which would reach 243,000 subscribers, plus non-subscriber flyer pack distribution homes, the total cost on that would be - is this correct, Terri? I think that should be $13,782?
MS. TERRI AKER: Yes.
MS. MURRAY: Yes, okay, $13,782, not $13 million. So I think basically what we were asked was to provide that on the flyer packs and Darlene has already provided the supplementary information on what it would cost to advertise in much the same way as you have already been doing in the newspapers. So perhaps I'll just stop there and if you have any specific questions, we can answer those for you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Porter.
MR. CHUCK PORTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess my first question is with regard to cost, and you just briefly held the flyer up but I kind of had a look at it; it looks like there's a fair bit of information in it. I don't know exactly what the committee was thinking, I don't know if it was this detailed or not. I realize there's a fair bit. That's considerably better than what we generally put into the paper.
I guess my first question is the cost of doing the flyer - is that searched out, is that the best cost for doing it? Is this one price, from one person? One company?
MS. MURRAY: No, excuse me. What we did, Mr. Porter, was, the cost I gave you was based on doing this and we always - generally government procurement guidelines, we do tendering for these. So I was trying to give you a ballpark figure.
MR. PORTER: There's certainly a lot of room to put information in there, put a lot of cost.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Massey.
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MS. JOAN MASSEY: It's a really expensive undertaking. I think when we started down the road of course, we were information-gathering and we've gathered it. I think it's something I'm going to have to take back to caucus and run it past some other people, because that's a big expense, and we still have the issue of even - I was thinking this morning if we do branch out and if we did go ahead and do this and we bring people in on the process, we still are facing some of the other issues that we've talked about before, which I won't get into here, but you know how we only see the one resumé.
So there's still, even if we bring more people in, we're still stuck with the same process.
When I originally thought of this, I was thinking - I don't know about you, Chuck, but more like a booklet. This looks like a mini newspaper to me so I'm really not sold, I don't think. I'd have to really look at it more closely.
[9:15 a.m.]
MR. PORTER: I was thinking more like the newsletter style, not maybe quite that big, a smaller version of that maybe with a better look than what's typically going out.
MS. MASSEY: More like a booklet, so you could - if it was this size and you opened it up like this and there were two or three pages or four, then you can keep that in your drawer, you can just sort of - you know, somebody at home would keep that in the same drawer as their telephone book or where they keep the Cole Harbour Place booklet that comes - like, for example, the Cole Harbour Place flyer that comes out and people with children or just themselves, adults, will keep that at home. Anyway, that's sort of what I was thinking of, or sort of hoping to see, not that this isn't really nice and brightly coloured and pictures and whatever. It's not exactly what I had in mind, to tell you the truth. So that's sort of where I am, Mr. Chairman, I'm sort of - it's just very expensive and I don't know.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Maybe, Ms. Murray, you could ask - if I could just ask you, if you went to a booklet thing, would that change the cost on it much or would it have . . .
MS. MURRAY: It would not change it significantly. Your delivery costs are going to remain constant and they are very high. The $21,000 to $23,000 to produce it, if you go to a booklet, you're not going to see a great deal of difference in that. I think the majority of the cost is with the delivery.
MR. PORTER: I'm just curious, I guess since you're here - and we've been tossing this around for awhile - and you folks coming from a communications background, I'm interested to know what you might think would be a good way of
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delivering this particular issue, this item. That's one example, but are there others that you have in mind that perhaps we haven't thought of. I'd be interesting in hearing, if you have some ideas.
MS. MURRAY: Certainly, we have had discussions with Darlene regrading this in the past, and I believe she has those included in her presentation that she has put forward. I believe that it has been proven that the larger ad has been effective. Darlene, I believe - and I don't mean to speak for you, Darlene - in looking back to see, the number of applications that have been received when this has run in the daily papers have increased. This is effective advertising. I guess we're talking about two different things here. One is the advertising and one is your overall communications initiatives around it.
One of the things Darlene and I discussed was perhaps moving the call for serving on agencies, boards and commissions, moving it to the home page of the government Web site, having a button there so that when people went to www.gov.ns.ca, there was a 'would you like to serve' button there, or a link that would let people know that these opportunities are here.
What we're hearing is that there's less reliance on people reading newspapers than there is on the Internet. Certainly the percentage of households in Nova Scotia that have Internet now has increased substantially, as well as the numbers of homes that have Internet across Canada, not that that's so much a factor in this case where you're looking to recruit Nova Scotians to serve on the agencies, boards and commissions. I think perhaps trying that might be a good start for you, getting that on the home page. I think I could get that done for you, back at the office. I don't think it would be a problem, getting that done.
The advertising - I don't know about your other, I guess, constrictions or the things that you're finding. If it's that you're not getting a number of people applying or if after they apply, as Ms. Massey said, there are problems beyond that. What I heard from Darlene was that you get more when you advise in the newspaper, you're hearing from more people. I think maybe stepping a little bit away from that and trying some non-traditional methods, for instance, the Internet, or your government home page might help you out. It's certainly not going to hurt to try, and that doesn't cost anything.
MS. MASSEY: Did we not, before, I thought, ask that the ABCs be advertised in a better manner on the government Web site? I'm sure we've specifically requested this before.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I remember that we had a discussion around it.
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MR. PORTER: I don't know that we actually requested that in any way, but I know that we had a fairly serious discussion and felt it was a good way to go. I would agree with that.
MS. MASSEY: So it just sort of never got past the discussion stage, there weren't any directives?
MR. PORTER: I apologize for not knowing the answer to that. We didn't have him come back to committee, we kind of broached it there and didn't touch on it at all.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That's right.
MR. PORTER: At our last meeting, we just avoided it. I guess maybe that probably has to come back there - that's where I was going the last meeting, maybe with that. I agree, I know we had a fairly significant discussion on that piece. Just to add to that, though, I think one of the pieces where this committee - I don't know that we were in agreement that there were enough people applying, I kind of felt that maybe there weren't enough people applying, and maybe some of the diversity wasn't there, as well, that we had hoped to look for.
I guess what I see in this is, okay, it's great, let's put this thing on the Web page, but I want something there that jumps right out at me and says, hey, Chuck, click here. The same with the newspaper - when I open up the newspaper today, and if we're going to put this in and we're going to spend a lot of money on it, I want something to say, hey, Miriam, you should pick this up and read this, it might be of interest to you. I don't know how to do that, that's not my specialty, but with communications people in the room I ask the question, is there some magic there that I'm not thinking about?
That's what hits me, as someone who's interested in making it better, who's not opposed to spending some money on making it better, as a committee member, but I want it to be a really effective value for dollar, when we put it out there, if it's going to be this kind of dollar, that's all. Those are just my thoughts.
MS. MURRAY: We would say this is effective, it's a good design, there's a lot of information in it. I believe that's why you moved to teaser ads, to say "watch for this", so people could actually cut this out and have it if they liked to be able to refer back to it, to get back to your point, Ms. Massey.
You are competing with a lot of other advertising. From what I understand, the ads for these positions go out a number of different ways. Departments have then on their Web sites, they are communicating directly with their particular stakeholders, so I believe the Office of African Nova Scotia Affairs sends it directly to their stakeholders when you advertise.
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We've been advertising in publications that reach those stakeholders, the same as we would with persons with disabilities. I believe if it's an agency, board or commission dealing with something specific to the department, they're going out specifically to their stakeholders, they're housing it on their Web site so the information is getting to the people that it's most applicable to.
MR. PORTER: So there's some duplication there obviously . . .
MS. MURRAY: Oh, there's a lot of duplication, yes.
MRS. DARLENE HENRY (Legislative Committee Clerk): My suggestion in doing up this bulk ad thing was to run it in two inserts, as well as doing the teaser ads, getting to the target newspapers and again, as Miriam had said, it goes out to the individual stakeholders within those agencies, boards and commissions.
The fact that it's going to go twice, you have it run one weekend and then the following weekend, it puts it out there and that's how it used to be until we went to the one insert. That was what the committee had agreed on, I think it was several years ago when we changed the format, to put it out once, in one insert.
I'm suggesting we do two inserts, plus the teaser ads, to generate, I guess, more visual - at, of course, a cost reduction than a flyer.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, any other comments? Ms. Murray.
MS. MURRAY: I would just like to show this; this is actually the size of the ad in the newspaper, so that's very difficult to miss if you open the paper.
MS. MASSEY: . . . that keeps turning people off when they look at it. I don't know. I'm like Chuck, it's big, right? But it's not . . .
MR. PORTER: There's something about it and I know you say it's effective. To me, it isn't and the reason it isn't is there's too much text in it. It's a massive load. There's this picture "Nova Scotia Needs You" which is great, but there has to be something more. Maybe it's colour, I don't know what it is.
Again, I just see this - if I was turning the newspaper and I turned to that, oh God, I'd just keep going. I mean to me, okay, I'd probably read it, but I know there are people because there are people when I ask them in my constituency, they don't even know what the ABCs are, they have no idea what they are. So even if it were this, no matter what it is - is it most effective going into the papers as opposed to a flyer being laid on someone's doorstep? I guess, is that another reasonable question?
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But there's something with all of this text. A lot of people, even when they read the newspaper, they look at the picture, they read the caption and if it interests them they might read a couple of paragraphs and they turn the page - they don't read the entire story. A lot of people aren't reading the entire story.
MS. MURRAY: This is certainly not something that we would highly recommend. (Laughter)
MR. PORTER: I guess that's what we're asking for, your opinion here.
MS. MURRAY: The direction was to include the names of all of the committees. So if you would like to move more to something like this and drive people to an area where they can see what committees are there, then they can be designed in that way. But the decision has to be made, do you want to let people know right away what the various committees are or do you just want to drive them to another area?
MS. MASSEY: It would be nice, I guess, if we saw some sort of variations on that ad. I mean, I'm like Chuck - I'm not in the advertising business. The only one we've ever seen was the original one before we ever got elected, before I was here, and then the new one that was designed, which was a huge improvement, don't get me wrong. The first one didn't even have a telephone number on it, if we remember back.
There have been big improvements, but we're not sure if we're just really not going down the right road, or maybe it's just too much - you're right, Miriam, maybe it's too much information, information overload when they see that. It sort of scares you off. Even if you had the "Nova Scotia Needs You" as a bigger headline, across this way, across the top - I'm agreeing a lot with Chuck today. I'm one of those people that a lot of the times I don't read the whole article, because you can get most of what you need that's in there, out of the headline and the first couple of sentences, or the first sentence of each paragraph, which is a trick a lot of people use when they read newspapers. If you read the first sentence of each paragraph - basically, that's the way reporters report.
Maybe if we could see - maybe it's too late - I feel bad in a way because we keep changing which way we're heading. I guess we're not sure which way to head, because the cost is an issue now, I think.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hebb.
MR. GORDON HEBB: I was just going to say, you have two types of ads you're producing, one which is sending you elsewhere for the information and one which is perhaps giving you too much information. Why couldn't you have an ad that was the size of this one, but doesn't mention it all - maybe give some representative samples? Why do you have to list every university that's here? Maybe each year, or every time you're
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putting this in, you pick 10 of these boards and highlight them, and the next time you do an ad you highlight some different ones - I don't know.
MRS. HENRY: The boards that are advertised in there are the ones where vacancies are occurring within that year's period. So to pick certain ones, what do you mean?
MR. HEBB: This ad doesn't mention any of them. This ad mentions them all. Is it possible that there's something in between, of this size, that would be more catchy, and Mr. Porter wouldn't flip by it?
MR. PORTER: Yes, all I was looking at was you might do this nice ad, but you would only put in Agriculture, Community Services, Economic Development, Education, et cetera, in the headers, not list all of them. That might say, if you're interested, these are available, or whatever that slogan is, the catchy slogan to get you to come back or to divert you to the Web site or to pick up the phone or e-mail or whatever it is. Don't give out everything, but give enough to pique the interest - oh well, maybe that's something I could do, maybe I can't. But the maybe is enough to get you to the next step in all likelihood, better than just saying, oh, Acadia University, I'm not going to be able to fit on that.
[9:30 a.m.]
If you just put Education in there, that might pique the interest of someone, as opposed to something specific. Then they can go on and look. Oh, maybe I do fit here, maybe I'm not so bad here. I could do this or I could do that. I don't know. I'm just throwing that out there as an idea. I do think there's a lot in there. I realize we don't advertise all of them all the time, just what the vacancies are, but probably still enough that it would be a substantial ad, I guess, or amount of information.
MRS. HENRY: From what I hear from some of the departments, when a person is applying, they need to know what they're applying to so they fit the criteria, so that when it goes before the screening committee, they have that qualified applicant for that board. I guess my only concern that the other departments may ask, is if you just put the headers in, are we going to get everything and anybody applying and having to weed through them and . . .
MR. HEBB: Unless you're just directing them to a Web site, where they're going to then see the details.
MR. PORTER: My idea was if it was enough to pique them, if you're interested, go here or pick up the phone but the Web site, obviously, is the best time, time-wise. At any rate, that was kind of what I had as the next step. That would weed out some, but I
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want to see more people applying. I guess that's the whole goal here, and it doesn't matter if it takes a little more time to go through those, in my opinion. I think staff should be . . .
MR. HEBB: You'd be able to measure to what extent you were being successful, because you could measure the hits on the Web site.
MR. PORTER: I suppose you could do that, too.
MS. MASSEY: Mr. Chairman, I think the last number we were given was there were 213 applications. That's not a huge number of people. Although I understand what we're hearing, it may increase the workload in various departments because they may get - somebody may use the e-mail address or write to the Executive Council office saying, I saw the ad last week, I'm interested in Education, I've got children in Primary and one in junior high, can you tell me where I might fit? Here's a little bit of my background, I'm President of the Home and School Association, and whatever. Which ABC might I possibly fit on?
So if we've had only 213 applicants, I don't see it as a huge time waster for the various departments because we have a lot of departments with a lot of people, if you look at the number of people working in government right now. So I don't really see that as an issue but maybe more one-on-one communication is a good thing too, because maybe if it sort of directs people either to the Web site and if we can improve that, that's great. Then if you can actually talk to somebody about your background, I think maybe that's a good thing.
MR. CHAIRMAN: One observation I have with this whole thing is, I think the direction I'm going in makes a lot of sense - I think we're going in a direction here. The Web site is something I understand we can do right away, that can be done right away and basically costs almost nothing to change, because it's staff time that you already have, that you can spend a little bit of time on this and get the Web site improved. I think that's something we should move forward immediately, we don't have to go back to a full committee or anything with that, just to improve it.
Then, after you have it improved, maybe our committee members, as a whole, can look at it and say yes, maybe we should see if you can do this or this. So I think that should probably go ahead right away.
The other concern I have is, there are still a lot of people in Nova Scotia who don't have access to a Web site. Some areas of Nova Scotia don't have high-speed Internet - a lot of areas in Nova Scotia don't have that. There has to be another way. A 1-800 number is a great idea; again, that takes a lot of staff time to do that.
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I wonder if there's not - I'm not printing a big booklet, is there something we could send out to the libraries all over Nova Scotia? Maybe something like this that describes each position - maybe we could do it one time - describes each position, how to apply and that sort of thing is sent out to all the libraries, we just mail it out in the regular mail. I don't know how many libraries there are, there are probably well less than 100, I think - I don't know. Then it would be at the library, if someone has access to a library and not the Internet, or other things like that.
Maybe it's a reference piece of material we could use in our MLA offices if someone comes in and says, look, there's an opening in Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, the Board of Registrars, Embalmers and Funeral Directors. Someone wants to know what it is, so they get the description of what it is, how you apply for that particular one and maybe make up a booklet like that. That gives people more information so they don't waste their time sending it in, because that's definitely a board that I don't think I want to serve on, because I have no expertise, and it would have to be someone with some expertise or some interest in it. I think that maybe that information would be useful to have, too, circulated again, something we could just maybe photocopy and provide in addition to the Web site and wherever else we decide.
I think some of this stuff could be very, very interesting and people may not really realize what it is, just by the heading. You look at the heading and some of them - I know what they are because I've been involved in different ways in this job and on regional council, but a lot of people may not know. They may not realize what the board does, and maybe it's something that's very important to them but they don't realize the board deals with that and it's something they would definitely have some expertise or some interest in. So maybe we should do that as well.
I don't think it would take a lot - it would probably take a lot to compile all the information, but each department would have to do that and send it back; a little description of what the job is, how many times they meet, what the remuneration is, all that detailed information. That information should be available anyway so that if someone calls in, you could mail out a little pamphlet or it's on the Internet, or whatever the case may be. I think that would go a long way to get more people interested, once you got them sort of hooked with the ad to start with.
I think along those lines. I, too, agree it's going to be awfully expensive to advertise, but we have to do something to get more than 200-some applicants; we just have to. The department can weed them out. That's not very many applicants for all the departments we have. Probably no department has any more than 10, maybe 20 applications, and that's not very many to weed through in reality. So we're probably missing the boat on this situation.
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Here's a typical one right here, an ad for the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation. The Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation - that's the whole description; two lines. It just repeated what it said the first time. I have no idea what that is. I assume it's the board of directors. If I'm interested in the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation, on a board, I look at that and I say, I don't know what it is, I'm not interested in that, but if I look and see it's a board member and a board member gets paid this much, you meet so many times a month generally, and these are the types of decisions you're responsible to make, and those sorts of things, I think you might get some very qualified people who would apply for that - I would think. That's up for discussion, really. Any comments or further thoughts on this whole thing?
MR. PORTER: A lot of that, if I'm correct, exists now. You can go on-line, you can actually go deep enough to find the ABCs, there's quite a bit of information, some about remuneration and a little bit about what some of the committees do. I've been on there, and it is somewhat difficult to get in there and find it right now, as we've discussed. There is a fair bit of information on-line, but I like the idea of having it available, maybe in a hard copy. We talk about costs, it's always available to us to print off, I guess, in our offices. I like the library idea as well - it's not a bad thought - because there are still quite a few, at least in my area, a lot of people who use the library, whether they're going in there to use a computer or take out a book, there are still a lot of users. We have a new library, and we know that it's certainly needed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Your first book.
MR. PORTER: My first book, you're right. (Laughter) I agree, something has to be done. I don't think - I don't want to use the word, waste - we want to put a whole lot more time into it, we have to make some decisions sooner rather than later, and hopefully with these folks' input it can be a good decision. There has to be something. If we're going to advertise and spend money, I want to see it reaching out and stopping me, grabbing me and saying, you have to read this. I don't know if that's out there.
MS. MURRAY: I believe your efforts are quite well focused and quite well done right now with the information on the vacancies. It's sent to all departments, and they're the people who are dealing directly with the stakeholders. They go to the stakeholders, the industries, the sector groups and the people of interest that they already know, so you're reaching them. Then Executive Council sends it around to different places. There are links on the Web site. It seems to me you're doing a good job already, but that you're just looking for that nugget that will take it one step further.
We can cost out. It would take staff time to compile this information. Perhaps, Darlene, it's already in a format somewhere. Then Communications Nova Scotia could take it, look at it and figure out how we could get it into an easily-printable format. To your point, Mr. Chairman, on the number of homes not having Internet access, having
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this available for those who do in a PDF format that can be downloaded and printed at home, I believe it's being done now. Your efforts are good. What's being done to date is good.
We can give you some sample ads, again, leaving out all of the specific information. We can only move forward and do this based on the information we're given, and if it's no, we want all the boards listed in it, then that's the ad we design, to do that. Personally, it wouldn't be a very strong recommendation from me to do that. I believe that the ad like this, as you've said, is more effective with the link. We'll cost out what it would be - how much it would cost to get this information into a booklet that would be available to libraries and constituency offices and other places where the public could come in and have a look at it and see what's available.
I believe that after Terri's last visit here, she had an ad mocked up, what this sort of ad could look like, that is basically without all the information. It's just "Nova Scotia Needs You" and there are 100 ways that you can serve.
Those types of things are available. Decisions, I guess, just need to be made around, do we want all the information, do we not want all the information. Then my suggestion would be that, now, we should start compiling information, and we could probably go back and look at what was done in the past and get a measurement that, okay, when we advertise this way, we heard from this many people and when we advertise that way, we heard from this many, so you have a baseline, and then move forward, try a couple of things. You can try your next two times out to do things differently. We can look at what the cost would be to produce this booklet for libraries and constituency offices and chambers of commerce, and we can come back to you with those figures.
Perhaps we could assist by having somebody do a feature article on the agencies, boards and commissions, and we can send that out. Submit it to the media to see if they would like to pick up and run this - just basically an elaboration of the ad, these positions on these agencies, boards and commissions are available, here are the types of people - a general interest story. We could look at that.
I think if you start measuring, if you look at the booklet - we'll mock up a couple more ads, and if you make a decision on whether or not the names of the committees are going to be included or not, that allows us to move forward. If we put it front and centre, and I'm not even certain - Mr. Chairman, to your point - that there isn't something on the home page right now saying, learn more about agencies, boards and commissions. I don't know if it is or isn't on there now, but we'll have a look when we go back, and if it's not, we'll get it put up front and centre on there.
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If we could get the compilation, perhaps, get the numbers from when we went out the first time in 2005, we heard back from this many people, the second time we heard back, 2006, the two times, so if we could get the numbers and use some sort of measurement or baseline. It's always more effective when we can go back and look at what we did and how many people we heard back from, to know if we're moving in the right direction or not.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Those are very good points. One thing that I hear, and I'm sure my colleagues who are elected here heard the same thing - or several things you hear when you're an elected official - one thing is people are really sort of irritated all the time that they don't have any input. You hear people come in and say, what's the sense in voting, because my vote doesn't make any difference.
[9:45 a.m.]
I think these agencies, boards and commissions - if you tailored your ad around that and said to people, you can make a difference, you can make a difference by serving on a board in Nova Scotia, you can make a change in the direction the province is taking by serving on a board. If you sort of hit that tone, and I don't know - that's not the proper way to do it, but I'll leave it to yourselves to think along those lines.
We get people who are really irritated. I have good friends of mine who are great supporters of mine who say the same thing. You work, and you're doing the stuff, and they don't really understand how it all works. If they had an opportunity and they thought they could really make a difference in something, you could then say to those people, apply for a board, make a change. Do this. You might find that you get some very highly-qualified people who would then apply, and who would make a difference. Some of these boards are very influential, and they do make a difference as we move forward. It's very important. So maybe along those lines.
Let's eliminate some stuff first, if you don't mind. I think that's maybe - our idea of putting out a booklet, either mailing it or putting it in the newspapers, do you still want to proceed with that, or is it too expensive? What are your wishes on that? Let's start with that.
MS. MASSEY: I do think it's a fairly expensive undertaking. Instead of saying we're never going to do it, or we're not going to do it, if we can get the mock-up - Miriam said she could do a mock-up - of the flyer that looks different, and if we're talking about putting the flyer in the libraries or schools or sending it out to various community organizations, we can get a cost on that, too, later on to see what that would cost, perhaps. I think as far as saying we're going to put that flyer in newspapers right now, I just think - this is just me talking and not talking to anybody else - I just think it's
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very - it seems like a very expensive undertaking at this time with all the issues that we're facing and we're just not sure on the outcome.
That's part of the issue - we don't really know if that has worked anywhere else. We don't have any examples of any other provinces doing things differently than the way we've been doing it here. That's my understanding, because we've asked for that information before and we've never really got information back saying, here's how they do it in Manitoba and they have thousands of people applying every year, so I'm going to assume that maybe everybody is in the same boat we are. I think that's what we did hear, was everybody struggling to get people on these ABCs.
I mean, I feel bad saying that, maybe we should put that on the back burner for the time being.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Porter.
MR. PORTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll agree with Ms. Massey, only because of a couple of words you said a few minutes ago - we're reaching people. Obviously if we're reaching the people, we're not promoting a message that's effective enough for them to come back and say I want to apply for that board. When we find that message, then I think I'd look at spending money, maybe, or a flyer but I think we need to find a message first, before we agree to let's just throw this out there in the flyer and spend the money right now.
So I tend to agree that if, in fact, it does sound like we're reaching it, the Web site needs some work but if we're going to go with some kind of hard copy in a newspaper flyer, whatever that is, we need to have a good message before we spend the money, I think.
MS. MASSEY: Plus also, Mr. Chairman, we haven't seen the actual flyer that we really want, I don't think at this point, which is a point we have to make, that we really haven't seen the end product that we really can commit to. I can't commit to something until I've seen the end product and the real message, as Chuck is saying. It's a good point.
MR. PORTER: It may be a flyer like that is a fantastic item and is very effective, you know, so just how much and what does it look like, I think, is a big thing right now for us to come to a conclusion.
MR. CHAIRMAN: An interesting discussion, but it doesn't put us any further ahead. Ms. Aker, what are your thoughts? You've been sitting there very quietly taking all this in.
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MS. AKER: Looking at the costs and comparing the flyer to the print, the costs of printing a flyer, production and print, is more expensive than running that large ad in all the dailies. Right now you're only doing the Cape Breton Post, The Daily News and The ChronicleHerald. If you were to run that large ad in all dailies twice a year, it's a little over $22,000 and you're targeting close to 200,000 people.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. My question is, where do we go next? It seems like we're spinning our wheels here. Any suggestions from the committee members? We need a direction here. Well, number one, I think we've come to the conclusion - correct me if I'm wrong here - that you'll look at the Web site, see what you can do with that immediately, because that's really basically no major capital cost, so we can look at that. After you get it done, maybe you could let us know, as committee members, and we'll go on the Web site and have a look and see just for the first time, because I've never gone to the Web site and looked for that, so I don't know what's there.
I won't do that until you let Mrs. Henry know and then she can let us know to go on the Web site and we'll have a look to see how easy it is to find, see what the information is and go from there. That will be something positive that we can move forward, because I'm the kind of person who wants to see things happen. So we can get that done, that can happen. When you think that might be possible to have finished - sort of a schedule for that? Ms. Murray.
MS. MURRAY: If I could just back up for a moment, because I'm thinking that perhaps the best way to approach this right now is to develop a good, solid communications plan around it. So I'm wondering if it would be appropriate to assign a communications resource to work with the chairman to develop a communications plan to identify some of the issues that we're faced with, to come up with some suggestions to get it all down in one spot, and then to have the committee approve the plan. Then we have a good, solid product to more forward with. We have a good direction, a direction we all agree upon. We can include in that some of the things that we've mentioned here about the various costs - a communications plan just the same as we would do for any other significant initiative.
I'm wondering if - and I'm not sure what the structure of the committee is, if it's appropriate that somebody work with just the chairman on that initially, starting out to get everything listed, and then the chairman brings it back to the committee to say, here's what we're looking at, if you would find that of a benefit.
MR. CHAIRMAN: What's the committee's wish?
MR. PORTER: It's a good starting place.
MR. CHAIRMAN: They just want me to do more work. (Laughter)
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MS. MASSEY: That's why it sounds so good. (Laughter)
MS. MURRAY: That way we can incorporate the things like the feature stories and perhaps how we would look at measurement, those sorts of things in it - the issues, the advantages. I think if you have something solid that you can sit and look at and refer back to, it's going to make your job a little bit easier.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That's a real positive move forward. Not that I'm going to be doing this, but you can take that and sort of organize it and bring it back to us in a format that can show us potential results and compare with what we did and everything else. I think that's what we've really been talking about in a roundabout way here, for awhile, and then we can look at other ideas to plug into that plan. Personally, I think that's a really good idea.
MS. MURRAY: So what I could do is find the resource to do that and get back to - would it be you, Mr. Colwell?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Maybe Mrs. Henry, then she'll make sure she makes the initial contacts.
MS. MURRAY: Okay, I'll get back to Darlene by the end of the week with the name of the person who would work with you on this and then we'll get going on it. It's probably going to be a better - we'll work out a better use of the money, too.
MS. MASSEY: Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to say that I think Miriam has done her job well today. She listened to what we had to say and then she communicated back that we didn't know what we wanted. (Laughter)
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would agree with that, very much so, that's why she's in communications. So we'll move forward on that basis and as we get sort of a plan put together, what we'll do is send any documentation or anything, we'll send it to other members of the committee so they can review it as we go forward too, before we have a meeting so that they don't come in cold to this, they can have some thoughts around.
Is there any other business that we might need to discuss today?
MRS. HENRY: From the things that we had before, now the committee talked about reviewing the guidelines and the format and putting together some type of standard form, such as what the adjudicative boards use.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That would be something, maybe put it together in this whole communications package, couldn't we? It's all part of the process, you get a form,
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because that would be part of the process of advertising this and it would be all one package.
MS. MURRAY: I'm sorry, I missed what you were saying, Darlene, about an adjudicative board.
MRS. HENRY: Well, there's a form that the adjudicative boards use, it's on their Web site. Just to fill in pertinent information instead of using a resumé or to accompany a resumé. The committee, I think several meetings ago, discussed the possibility of standardizing a form along those lines to accompany a resumé for people to apply to the different boards.
MS. MURRAY: If you'd like, it could be included in this move forward.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think it would be an idea, because again it's a communication tool and it should be the whole package. Anything else? I have to ask the supervisor here.
MRS. HENRY: Well, I know with the guidelines - I mean there are some questions along Guideline 11 and the solicitation, very important. The question I would think reads, were you solicited to apply to this board? I know there was some issue with that and I think we were going to discuss that later too, but I don't know.
MS. MASSEY: I don't recall that issue.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, there was an issue on that, it was around, I think the insinuation at that time was that someone was solicited to apply. There might have been some political connection with the person.
MS. MASSEY: I guess that would be questionable. I don't recall that conversation, but it's the same as we've all said here this morning. We've talked to people before, we try to get people involved, I think that's part of our job, to try to get our constituents on these ABCs. In the end, we don't have any pull, other than either saying yes or no at the very end of the process. We never see their applications at all.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Why don't we leave it with the Communications Nova Scotia people to come up with a form that would be standard, right across all departments, that we could use for this to gather the information. Then we can discuss the information on the form when it comes back, if we have any concerns about it. Maybe that would be the best thing to do. I think it's all part of the communications package. You have to make it easy to find out, understand what you're applying for, and then make it easy to apply. You need to have that whole process, I feel. I think that's all part of the stuff. Maybe whoever you're going to assign to this could look at that whole picture, and then if there
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are issues with the actual form, what's on the form, that's something the committee could discuss and either have removed or new things added, whatever the wish of the committee would be. Would the committee agree with that?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Anything else? That's it.
Thank you very much for coming today and guiding us through this maze. It's always a pleasure to have you here. We look forward to seeing you often.
We're adjourned.
[The subcommittee adjourned at 9:58 a.m.]
