MP Marc Serre ramps up advertising ahead of 2025 elections

2023-2024 office advertising tops $52,000 with Google and Facebook ads.

During the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 fiscal years, you could have described Nickel-Belt MP, Marc Serré as a fiscal conservative when it came to spending his taxpayer-funded office budget. For the first two years of this election term, the MP spent under $25,000 per year to advertise his name, accomplishments and political platforms.

But with the next federal elections coming up in 2025, Serre has ramped up this allowance to make sure his name is well known across the North.

According to the mandatory financial disclosures of office expenses, his “advertising” spending doubled during the 2022-2023 fiscal year and then reached $52,890 in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

$52,000 in one twelve-month period… While parliamentary rules do allow for MPs to use their “office budget” to advertise to their constituents the purpose is supposed to be very specific. The manual outlining what MPs can use their taxpayer budget on is precise in saying that advertising should be for providing the MP’s office location and contact information as well as announcing upcoming meetings related to the fulfillment of the member’s constituency functions.

Essentially, MPs should spend a bit of money to make sure constituents know who to contact. But “office advertising” is not supposed to be used for campaigning since other candidates don’t have access to the same office budgets.

Bigger advertising budget than most business

A study by Business Development Canada (BDC) in 2019 revealed that the average small business in Canada (up to 20 employees) spends approximately $30,000 per year. So that means that Serré’s office with 3 to 4 employees may be spending more than double what the average small business in his own riding do. Unfortunately small business owners typically have to pay for these expenses themselves.

Office Budget + Campaigning Budget

As the incumbent, Marc Serré does have a clear advantage on reaching the populace and his taxpayer funded advertising allowances obviously help him. But, Serré also has one of the strongest local Liberal fundraising team. During the last elections in 2021, Serré’s dwarfed the other candidates in spending $97,617 to campaign. This was almost four times higher than the Conservative candidates, Charles Humphrey who finished a close second despite only spending $25,429.

Although the Liberals are down in the polls and even in Northern Ontario, Marc Serré still has a huge financial advantage. His electoral district association currently has over $116,000 in cash with more than a year to go before the next elections. The maximum a candidate can spend in this riding is $142,000 and Serré is likely to have that ability.

This will mean that come 2025, we may have a hard time differentiating between “office ads” and “campaign ads” as we are sure to be inundated with Serré/Liberal messaging with nearly $200,000 at the team’s disposal.

Google and Facebook ads

The most questionable part of Serré advertising spending is his use of social media platforms and Google search algorithms. Serré’s office spent nearly $1,000 on Meta Platforms and Google during the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

The Meta expenses are contradictory to the government’s current disagreement with the platform but the Google expenses are even more concerning. This means that Serré is likely distorting public perception by increasing his office’s or his name’s outlook on search results.

Top Categories

Highway billboards are by far Serré’s biggest advertising expenses. The MP spent $15,500 of his office budget on this category last year. His second biggest expense was radio ads which required $11,300. The rest of his $52,000 was spread out between various local newspapers and other media.

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