Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much, everyone, for being here with us this afternoon.
Mr. Wouters, I offer you belated congratulations on your new role, which is not so new anymore.
Quite frankly, I am now at a bit of a loss as to where to start. I say this with the utmost respect for all of you and for all of the people you work with in your departments. Some of these comments, I stress, are not to be taken personally.
I am astounded at the position that everything that has been done complies with all of the rules. I would first point out that almost a month ago I wrote a detailed letter to the Treasury Board outlining very serious allegations about breaches of the communications policy in the federal identity program. Not once have I received a response or even an acknowledgement of my letter.
I find it astounding that what I have now heard and read in your submissions sounds extraordinarily like a response to my letter, and I find it rather extraordinary that we've waited a month for a response to that letter and you've now done it in this committee process.
We have two hours. We have significant questions about accountability and the amount of money that has been spent, but at this point in time, I want to focus on the content of the advertising and our real concern that the Government of Canada's use of colours, images, and slogans, and the “look and feel” aspects and other branding elements, are the same as or mirror those of the Conservative Party.
Our allegations and concerns about the content of the advertising are very serious.
We saw this in Ontario under Mike Harris's government. The subsequent Liberal government brought in significantly different rules, and I think very appropriately so. I would point out, too, the comments about the Privy Council's involvement in this. There is significant responsibility, and I quote: “To ensure the integrity and efficacy of government advertising, institutions must: co-ordinate advertising planning with PCO...”. There is specific responsibility to do so in a “non-partisan fashion consistent with the principles of parliamentary democracy...”.
The PCO itself has responsibility. I quote from the communications policy itself: “The Privy Council Office...has a central role in the co-ordination and management of government communications”. On PCO, the policy states, “It is responsible for advising Cabinet and its committees...on communication issues, themes and strategies”. I can go on, but I needn't tell you what your jobs are.
But in the sense that we have a massive advertising program that has the same or an extremely similar look and feel to that of the Conservative Party of Canada, and that as far as we know upwards of $100 million may have been spent on this advertising, while we don't take exception to advertising that may inform Canadians of programs, I would suggest to you that the majority of this advertising program does not in fact do so. Rather, it goes out to tell the Canadian public how wonderful the government is. In so doing, in that effort to confuse the government with the Conservative party, it is in effect conferring a massive benefit on the Conservative Party of Canada.
Ms. d'Auray, you said that part of the job was to tell Canadians that the government is out working for them. With all respect, knowing that it's their taxpayer money that is being spent on this, I think Canadians actually would rather have the government simply do the work than spend their taxpayer money on telling them that somehow the government is working for them. I would suggest that it should be an assumption that the government is actually working for us.
I will now turn to what is probably most problematic about this entire advertising campaign and the breaches of the communications policy in a way that confers a significant benefit on the Conservative Party. The logos on the cheques, in my view, are a symptom of the larger disease of trying to confuse the two in the Canadian public's eyes.
There was a piece done by the Canadian Press not too long ago that was the result of what was said by a number of members of the Privy Council Office, both former and current, who, not surprisingly, would not reveal their identities for fear of reprisals, and who had informed the Prime Minister of significant misgivings at the time of the budget and the planning. They said that “the Tories are trampling the admittedly grey area between partisanship and policy”. Also, they said that “they've never seen anything so blatant as the current use of the office for self-promotion”.
Can you please speak to the very specific question? Because if I ask you questions about whether you believe this complies with the policy, you've already said that, and I'll significantly disagree with you. So I'm now going to ask my question slightly differently.
Can you speak specifically to this question? Has there been anyone in the Privy Council Office from January until now who has expressed concern about the partisan nature of the government advertising?