Ontario - New logo costs lottery agency millions
Ontario tax dollars at work … what about health and social programs?????
New logo costs lottery agency millions
MPP calls the change ‘extremely wasteful’
KAREN HOWLETT, Globe and Mail, 07/09/06
TORONTO — The Ontario Crown agency that manages the province’s casinos has become embroiled in controversy for spending up to $6-million in taxpayers’ money to re-brand the corporation.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., which had been known until recently as OLGC for short, spent between $4-million and $6-million to lop the C from its logo, chief executive officer Duncan Brown said yesterday. He was being questioned by Progressive Conservative MPP Joe Tascona at the standing committee on government agencies.
Mr. Tascona said in an interview after the hearing that the logo change seemed like an "extremely wasteful" exercise.
Mr. Brown said in the committee hearing that the new logo was just one part of the re-branding process. "It’s not about dropping a C," he said. "It’s about creating a brand that represents trust and integrity."
Mr. Brown was also grilled about why the lottery corporation’s contract with the advertising agency that created Premier Dalton McGuinty’s campaign ads more than doubled after the 2003 election. In 2004, Bensimon-Byrne received a new three-year contract for the lottery valued at $2.8-million. The firm’s previous three-year contract was valued at $1.4-million.
Lottery spokesman Joe Vecsi said a number of firms, including Bensimon-Byrne, were involved in the design and development of the new logo.
"Ontarians deserve an explanation for this Liberal-friendly advertising agency’s huge increase in its contract and they deserve to know why a Crown corporation is spending millions to drop a letter from its logo," Mr. Tascona said.
Yesterday was not the first time the ad agency’s government contracts have come under scrutiny. The Ontario government said in November that there was no political interference when Bensimon-Byrne’s total government contracts jumped to $6.3-million during the McGuinty government’s first full year in office from just $99,900 under its predecessor.
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