VANCOUVER — As Health Canada struggled to get Canadians to download the COVID Alert exposure-notification app earlier this year, it considered asking one of the country’s most famous exports for help.

“There’s one way that almost everyone in Canada can be just like a celebrity: downloading the COVID Alert app,” says a Health Canada employee imitating actor Ryan Reynolds in a mockup of a promotional video that the department made as part of its proposal for a COVID Alert Day, which they considered planning for Feb. 17. 

Health Canada dreamed the snarky, self-deprecating Reynolds—star of Hollywood blockbusters like Deadpool and Free Guy, and an entrepreneur who’s shown a knack for creating viral videos—could help convince reluctant Canadians to download the app. “We are looking to create a buzz on all social media platforms … to get Canadians’ attention,” wrote Health Minister Patty Hajdu, in a letter obtained by The Logic via access-to-information request.

The app, which uses Bluetooth and notifies people if they’ve been near someone who reported testing positive for COVID-19, launched in Ontario in late July 2020 after a nearly month-long delay while the federal government unsuccessfully attempted to bring more provinces on board. Since then, nine provinces and territories agreed to use the system, with Alberta, B.C., Nunavut and Yukon as the holdouts. 

Uptake has been slow. Just before it launched, a federal source told The Logic “the theoretical target is 60 per cent population uptake”—about 23 million people. Within its first week, the app cracked 1.1 million downloads. Then enthusiasm petered. The app has only been downloaded roughly 6.7 million times to date, despite a promised multimillion-dollar public awareness campaign. COVID Alert Day was not part of that push, said Mark Johnson, a Health Canada spokesperson, in an email. 

According to Health Canada’s marketing and communications plan, contained within documents acquired via access-to-information request, the department wanted to “create a captivating national promotional digital campaign” to boost stalled download numbers. It would target smartphone owners, but especially young adults between 19 and 34 years of age, with an emphasis on “rural males who are less likely to adopt public health guidelines.”

In addition to Tweets, Facebook frames and Instagram Story stickers, Health Canada had hoped to recruit celebrities like Reynolds to participate in a series of videos. It entertained different concepts, depending on who they could get to participate, and created a video mockup of one imagined for Reynolds, called “Be Like A Celebrity.”

The mockup, which was posted on Vimeo, features a voiceover from the (quite good) Reynolds imitator acknowledging that while Canadians may be jealous of celebrities like him, “really, we’re just regular human beings, just like you.” As he says, “We live in houses,” we see a mansion; “I have an average wife,” he says, as we see actor Blake Lively; and as he says, “Right now, I’m even working several jobs just to make ends meet,” we see a still of Reynolds in a suit pouring a glass of gin from a liquor brand he co-owns. The imitator then says we can all be heroes like celebrities by downloading the app, which works through “magic … saving regular, innocent people, like my mom.” He takes a jab at the low number of Canadian celebrities and closes out by asking if he can do the “a message from the Government of Canada” jingle.

Reynolds did not respond to The Logic’s request for comment.

Health Canada did not answer The Logic’s questions about whether it had asked Reynolds or any other celebrities about lending their clout to the campaign. According to the documents, however, it did contact “over 190 representative notable Canadians and content creators,” with plans to keep reaching out to others who could influence its target demographic.

Another of Health Canada’s concepts would have featured an unidentified celebrity calling their famous friends to tell them they may have COVID-19, with their friends reacting with surprise that they hadn’t input their positive result on the alert app to let them know all at once. The department also considered making a video riffing on the idea of what it means to be Canadian, which would call downloading the app as Canadian as doing unpaid commercial work, and would feature its celebrity spokesperson saying, “Wait, I’m not getting paid?”

Health Canada didn’t go ahead with either the videos or the day of awareness. “Videos in support of COVID Alert Day were never produced,” wrote Johnson. “Concepts were created and developed internally as possible options to promote the app.” The day was “considered to supplement other activities,” he said, but was ultimately cancelled “as there were competing government communication priorities, including vaccine communications and public health guidance.”