Liberal government to spend $1.6M to showcase Canada at G7 media centre

OTTAWA — The Trudeau government will spend nearly $1.6 million to market Canada to foreign journalists coming to Quebec City for next month’s G7 summit, conjuring echoes of the political uproar the federal Conservatives triggered in 2010 with a similar sum for the same objective.

This year, careful attention has been paid to ensuring the summit’s international media centre is draped in Canadiana — right down to the maple syrup on the menu.

The goal is to not only use the media centre to advance Ottawa’s chosen themes for the summit, but to sell Canada — and the popular Charlevoix tourist region — to foreign media. It will focus on Canada’s technological, touristic and culinary strengths.

Due to security reasons, most visiting journalists are unlikely to get anywhere near the Charlevoix town of La Malbaie, where the G7 leaders will actually meet in early June. Instead, about 2,000 journalists will be stationed about a two-hour drive away at the Quebec City convention centre.

A key objective of the government’s “showcase exhibit” at the media centre will be sharing highlights and flavours from Charlevoix and other parts of Canada with visiting journalists.

A similar $1.9-million effort to promote Canadian tourism caused a political migraine for former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government prior to the G8 and G20 summits in Toronto and Ontario’s Muskoka region.

Most of the disapproval focused on Ottawa’s decision to pay $57,000 of that amount to build an artificial lake at the media centre, part of an effort to showcase Muskoka to those journalists who were unable to travel from Toronto to Huntsville, Ont., for the G8 meeting.

Critics — including then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and then-NDP leader Jack Layton — seized on the so-called “fake lake” and hammered the Harper government for it. Harper defended the project as a well-planned “marketing pavilion” for Canada.

“There are thousands of visitors from around the world,” Harper said at the time. “This is a classic attempt for us to try and market the country.”

The Tories also faced flak for using a $50-million G8 legacy fund to build a $100,000 gazebo and to pay for streetscape upgrades and parks far from the summit site in the riding of then-Treasury Board president Tony Clement.

Eight years on, the controversy still strikes a familiar chord on Parliament Hill. Last week, Treasury Board President Scott Brison used it as ammunition as he took a shot at the Tories during question period.

“Those are the same Conservatives who took millions of dollars from a border infrastructure fund to build gazebos and fake lakes hundreds of kilometres away from the border,” Brison said.

For this year’s G7 summit, the Liberal government awarded the $1.58-million contract to Montreal-based firm C2 International Inc. It will develop the showcase for the media centre, which will be in open to journalists around the clock from June 7-9.

“It will be an incomparable opportunity to promote our country and demonstrate its expertise and know-how, in addition to positioning Canada as a must-see tourism and culinary destination, as well as an innovation hub at the regional, provincial and national levels,” said the government’s public tendering notice for the exhibit.

“The International Media Centre must become a strategic summit site. It is a home base and an information centre, but it is also a showcase for Canada.”

Additional costs for things like food, beverages and equipment needs for the media are not part of the contract.

C2 International’s concept for the media centre will go well beyond the standard summit formats of providing coffee, donuts, a stage and video screens, president Richard St-Pierre said in an interview. Contractual and security considerations prevented him from sharing many details.

St-Pierre called his concept a modern, interactive approach that will encourage dialogue among foreign journalists about the main themes of the summit and Canadian values in general.

“Canada is absolutely great and we don’t know enough how great we are — it’s about time we show the world that we are.”

The company’s approach to organizing events focuses on workshops and stimulating participant feedback, rather than relying on the one-way, monologue methods of conventional conferences, he said.

The media centre, he added, will also seek to sell Canada to the world as an innovative country by, for example, promoting Montreal’s strength in artificial intelligence.

Marketing the country will also mean that the food served at the centre will be inspired by Quebecois, Canadian and First Nations cuisine.

C2 declined to share specifics about the menu, but noted it will feature maple syrup and is not expected to include poutine.

“As a country, yes, we have the Rockies, we have beavers, we have great forests — but it’s also much more,” said St-Pierre, whose company will host the annual C2 Montreal business conference this month, with speeches by rapper Snoop Dogg and American whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

“It’s (artificial intelligence), it’s the warmth of the Canadian people, it’s how we know food, (how) we love our wine. So, all of those things have to be reflected in the media centre.”

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