OTTAWA — Federal cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, continue to pitch the virtues of their first Liberal budget across Canada this week. OTTAWA — Federal cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, continue to pitch the virtues of their first Liberal budget across Canada this week. With Trudeau in Edmonton today talking up the spending plan his government released last week, one thing noticeably absent from the annual post-budget sales job is a government advertising blitz. The former Conservative government came under frequent fire for spending tens of millions of dollars on ads touting the benefits of its economic action plan, which was simply a branding exercise for the annual federal budget.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau says the Liberals don't have a paid ad campaign set for their first budget. (The Canadian Press) Finance Canada alone spent $8 million on action plan ads last year — the second-biggest single government ad campaign behind recruiting ads by the Defence Department. Other government departments and agencies, including the Canada Revenue Agency and Employment and Social Development Canada, each spent more than $6 million on blue-tinged, budget-themed advertising last year. Finance Minister Bill Morneau says the Liberals don't have a paid ad campaign set for their first budget, and will be reviewing all government ad spending. A 'different approach' "We as a government have decided to take a much different approach in how we present ourselves more broadly and we're going to be very careful about what we spend in all areas of advertisement and this is no exception," Morneau said this week during a budget-promoting stop in Montreal. "We won't be doing any paid advertising for the budget." Finance officials said the government could still find a need to advertise aspects of the budget later on. And a new book looking at message control in Canadian politics says promoting a brand is critical to government communications in the fast-paced, digital news age.