Ontario spent record sum on advertisements to promote governing party: AG [Video]

The Ford government has spent more than any other previous administration in any other year on advertisements which, the auditor general has found, were “designed to promote the governing party.”

Auditor General Shelley Spence found as part of her annual report that, in the fiscal year ending at the end of March, the province spent a total of $104.6 million on advertising.

That is the most any Ontario government has ever spent on advertising in a single year, the auditor general said, and triple what was spent the year before.

The two biggest campaigns run over the past year focused on Ontario’s economy and were worth roughly 65 per cent of all government advertising last year.

The auditor general found the advertisements were compliant with current legislation but would have broken partisanship rules abolished in 2014.

“In the old act, ‘partisan’ was much more defined,” Spence said.

“So partisanship would have …