Government’s Canada 150 survey project falls short of targets after delays, cost overruns

TheStar.com
January 4, 2019
Chris Hannay

A government-funded Canada 150 project that was supposed to cost $576,500 and reach one million Canadians instead cost more than $800,000 and netted less than a 10th of its target audience.

The Echoes project from Vox Pop Labs, which is hosted on CBC’s website, was an interactive survey designed to see how Canadians felt about their country on the 150th anniversary of Confederation. The project was pitched to go online in the spring of 2017, but was delayed until December. The federal government awarded the project a grant of $576,500, but later gave it an extra $228,782 to get it off the ground. It was called Project Tessera, but the name was changed when it was published.

In its bid for Canada 150 funding, Vox Pop promised to reach a wide audience. “It is not inconceivable that the project will not only reach an estimated 1,000,000 Canadians, but if promoted properly, the reach could surpass that number,” said Vox Pop Labs’s proposal, obtained under access-to-information laws.

But when the website went live in the last weeks of Canada’s 150th year, it fell far short of hitting the million-person target the government had been counting on. The government says a total of 86,373 people have filled out the survey, and a progress report the company filed in February, 2018 -- also obtained under access to information -- suggests half of that (43,032) is the number of people who tested the survey in a series of focus groups in 2016.

Projects that got grants under the Canada 150 Fund were required to set targets for participation and report back on how they did on those targets. It was also one of the factors bureaucrats used in deciding which projects received grants.

According to the company’s progress report, of the $805,282 in government funding, $533,721 was approved for personnel (including staff and contractors); $209,042 for research costs (such as the focus groups); $36,794 for organizing a conference; and $25,725 for building the website itself. The government said this week that the final amount sent to Vox Pop Labs was $795,578.

Clifton van der Linden, chief executive of Vox Pop Labs, said he thought the promotion for the project “fell short of expectations,” but feedback from those who did participate was positive.

“It’s a remarkable application in many ways, and it remains online for Canadians to explore as a sort of digital representation of Canadian society at 150,” Mr. van der Linden said. He said the company also contributed funds to the project but would not disclose how much that was.

CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson said the public broadcaster did not contribute any cash to the project and did not want to comment on it.

Echoes was one of two high-profile contracts Vox Pop Labs received from the government in 2016. The other was MyDemocracy.ca, a website the Liberal government commissioned to consult Canadians about electoral reform. In its final report, Vox Pop Labs said the 383,074 users who filled out the survey were generally satisfied with Canada’s democracy. Ultimately, the Liberal government abandoned its 2015 campaign promise to reform Canada’s electoral system. Vox Pop Labs was paid $369,058 for the MyDemocracy.ca project in a sole-sourced contract.

Vox Pop Labs’ most popular project is Vote Compass, an online survey often hosted by CBC during elections that the company says has garnered millions of responses.

Echoes was one of the government’s 38 “signature projects” that, combined, took up the biggest share of the Department of Canadian Heritage’s $200-million Canada 150 budget.

The department reported to Parliament in November that 32 million people had participated in Canada 150 celebrations across the country. That would represent a significant portion of the 36.7 million people who lived in Canada in 2017, according to Statistics Canada. The number also takes into account family members visiting from outside the country, the government said.

Canadian Heritage spokesperson Natalie Huneault said the department derived the number of 32 million from a telephone survey conducted in January, 2018. That poll of 2,000 Canadian adults found 70 per cent said they had participated in some way in Canada 150, by either attending an event, visiting a national park or watching something about Canada 150 on TV. For the purposes of the government’s tally, those respondents counted as more than one person if they reported having other family members living in their household.

The survey, conducted by Quorus Consulting Group, cost $82,909.