Out of 2,003 adult Canadians polled, only three said they ever visited the Economic Action Plan Web portal.

Canada’s Economic Action Pan Web portal is seeing very little action by way of online visits despite a multi-million dollar campaign by the Harper government to promote the program, according to a recent survey.

Launched in 2009 to raise public awareness of the government’s initiatives to create jobs and promote economic growth, the site is among the marketing strategies which has caused no less that $113 million in the last four years.

This year, the government also began airing 30-second television ads to further promote the action plan. And a critical part of measuring viewer impact in to track online traffic on the Actionplan.gc.ca Web portal.

Results of a poll of 2,003 adult Canadians done by the survey firm Harris Decima for the federal Finance Department in April this year, show that only three people visited the Web site. Results of the survey were obtained by the Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

Just six per cent of respondents who said the recalled the TV adds which started appearing in February last year reported doing anything about it, according to the Canadian

Of the few people that actually took action, nine said they did so to complain or “express displeasure” about the TV ads.

However, a spokesperson for the Finance Department said other surveys commissioned by the department show an overall awareness of the action plan campaigned have gone up to as high as 62 per cent this year from a low of 20 per cent in 2009.

Traffic to the action plan Web site increased during the winter campaigns to 12,600 visits each day from a baseline of 2,300, according to spokesperson Jack Aubry. The campaign included print, radio TV and online ads.

(By Nestor E. Arellano)