Bill C-544 (Historical)

Elimination of Partisan Government Advertising Act

An Act to amend the Auditor General Act (government advertising)

This enactment amends the Auditor General Act to provide for the appointment of an Advertising Commissioner to assist the Auditor General in performing duties related to the use of public funds for any advertisement that a department proposes to post, publish, display or broadcast, to ensure that the advertisement meets the requirements of that Act. It establishes a process by which proposed messages are reviewed by the Advertising Commissioner to determine whether they meet the requirements of that Act and provides for reporting on the discharge of the duties under that Act.

Government Advertising

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government has no plan for jobs and growth, except in the advertising sector. It is not surprising that the entire cabinet is seized with developing slogans for partisan government advertising. Now, get this, every department and agency is forced to shill for the Prime Minister's 24 Seven vanity video site. My private member's bill, the elimination of partisan government advertising act, debated this morning, could put a stop to all of this right now.

With scarce taxpayer dollars and so many real needs in Canadian society, when will the government do the right thing, pass the bill and stop wasting millions and millions of dollars on taxpayer funded propaganda?

Opposition Motion—Government Advertising

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the member back. It is great to see him here, and I very much appreciate the excellent question.

What we are hoping to see through this particular resolution is recognition. The recognition could easily be had by the government looking at Bill C-544, a bill that has been introduced by my colleague from Ottawa South. I have heard a number of speeches on that very important bill. It is a bill that would ensure a higher sense of transparency and more accountability. It is real. It is tangible. It can be done.

I would look to government members in particular and challenge them to explain why they would oppose a third party coming to the table and providing that authorization. It is only a question of time before it happens. The Prime Minister has a choice. He can either get out in front of the issue or he will be left behind on it. Whether it is the leader of the Liberal Party or the public, not only are they demanding it, but it is only a question of time before it happens.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to follow on the comments from my friend from Winnipeg North. Is this not ultimately a function of transparency? Is it a function of the fact that the government is afraid of a motion that proposes transparency in government advertising?

I want to specifically focus on the excellent piece of legislation, the private member's bill from the member for Ottawa South, Bill C-544, and particularly the proposal to bring in an advertising commissioner, a newly appointed position, under the rubric of the Auditor General. It would be an independent officer of the legislature.

Why is this a positive initiative in terms of dealing with transparent measures, which the government seems to be opposed to?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the best place to start is where my colleague and friend just left off in terms of the importance of the issue. We need to recognize that we are talking about is tax dollars. The government establishes all sorts of programming, and no one would deny government the opportunity to promote and encourage legitimate programs through advertising. There are many different measures the public needs to know about and there is a role for the government to use tax dollars to promote those information-type ads.

However, the Prime Minister more than any other prime minister likely in the history of Canada has used and manipulated public tax dollars to purchase public advertising. We are not talking about a few million dollars; we are talking about $750 million. That is three-quarters of a billion dollars. A good portion of those taxpayer dollars is being used for advertising nothing more than political partisan propaganda so the Prime Minister's Office can send out the Prime Minister's message to pat the Conservative Party, the collective back of the cabinet, on the back.

I believe Canadians will not be fooled by the government's gross neglect of tax dollars. They recognize the government has gone too far in squandering tax dollars when there are so many other needs out there.

I have been here throughout the day listening to both the Conservatives and the New Democrats being critical of the motion, even though I suspect we will get support for the motion from the New Democrats. What it reminds me of is political parties that do not recognize the reality of the day. Members will recall when the leader of the Liberal Party stood in his place and brought forward proactive disclosure. They will recall that the Conservatives and the NDP said no. We continued to push the issue. Eventually, the Conservatives came onside and the New Democrats were dragged kicking and screaming and we had to force it to a vote, but eventually they too came on side, and now we have proactive disclosure.

Proactive disclosure would have been a wonderful thing to have had a number of years ago, just like what we have proposed today. It is a significant step forward. We are talking about a huge amount of tax dollars being spent every year on public advertising. Why not allow for an independent body approve what a political party should pay for versus a government? Why would the government oppose that? That is what it is doing today. The Conservatives have tried a great deal to change the channel.

Let us be focused on this issue. The motion we are debating today deals with public advertising and the creation of an independent body that would allow for the determination of which ads could go ahead because they would be in the best interest of the Canadian public, not the Prime Minister and the PMO. It is an independent agency. By doing that, we would have much better advertising on important issues facing governments and Canadians today.

I have heard members talk about the importance of some of the veterans and housing programs. No doubt there are a lot of good programs that need to be advertised. The Liberal Party is not saying no to that.

We are saying that there needs to be that independent body. When those very important tax dollars are being spent, we need to ensure there is an independent body that makes sure it is not being done for the wrong reason. A wrong reason would be that it is too political and it is more about the endorsement of a political party, the party that happens to be the government of the day.

The government's only response as to why this is a bad initiative is to reflect on years past. The Conservatives say that because of the past, they should not have to subject themselves to this. The NDP members will climb on their high horse as if they are not to blame and have no responsibility for any misgivings. They will say that fine, maybe we should have something like this, but why should the Liberals be the ones to introduce it? This is much like the approach on proactive disclosure where the Liberal Party ultimately led the charge because we recognized that there was a need for it. The same thing is happening here. The only difference is that the NDP members are the ones who are being a little reluctant in supporting us, but we kind of sense that they will. It is the Conservatives that are rejecting the motion.

I would suggest to the Prime Minister and his staff within his office, because they are the ones who circulate everything to the Conservative caucus members, that if they fail to recognize the importance of this issue, if they want to continue to hide and not be transparent with Canadians on literally hundreds of millions of dollars, then the Liberal Party will incorporate it into the next election. We are prepared to make the bold statement that it is time for change, whether there is the unanimous support of this House or not. The Liberal Party is committed to making a difference, because we recognize the importance of tax dollars.

There is absolutely nothing to be lost by taking the initiative that my colleague from Ottawa South has brought forward in the form of Bill C-544. If the government truly cared about the taxpayers and understood the importance of advertising in a legitimate fashion, it would recognize that there is a piece of legislation that we could debate and provide tangible results for Canadians today. This is not something that is difficult to understand. It is a fairly straightforward idea. It is an idea that is necessary.

We recognize the importance of advertising, but there has been a great insult to the collective intelligence beyond this chamber when we see the abuse of expenditures. The best example I can come up with offhand is the action plan ads. Some $13 million is being spent based on a budget that has been presented telling Canadians how wonderful the budget is. Well, if it is, where is the Minister of Finance? He is never around to defend it.

The budget is debatable at best in terms of its true value. It is an assault on the middle class. It is not creating jobs. At the end of the day, the budget is very limited in terms of the degree to which it would propel Canada into the future, both our economy and our social fabric. Yet, the Conservatives are spending $13 million to give false impressions to Canadians, as if the government has actually been doing a good job. Well, that has not been the case.

We can look at some of those underlying realities. There are trade deficits. There are infrastructure crises, depending on the community, in every region of our country, because the government refuses to spend the money but would rather wait until after the next federal election. There is underspending on important budget lines. The Conservatives talk tough about crime. They want to get child predators, yet the RCMP underspends because it is told to underspend in terms of the programs that would get tough on individuals who are exploiting our children on the Internet.

There are endless examples I could share with members today, just to show how bad this budget is, but they have no shame. They will spend millions promoting this budget and wasting tax dollars, in my opinion.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak today on the Liberal motion on government advertising from my colleague, the member for Ottawa South.

The Conservative government has proven time and time again that it has absolutely no shame in spending tax dollars on wasteful, ineffective and highly partisan advertising. The Conservatives have spent more than $750 million on government advertising. In fact, just today we have learned of new plans by the Conservative government to spend even more tax dollars on wasteful ads.

According to a new media report, not only is Finance Canada spending another $7.5 million on radio and television ads for April and May, but the Canada Revenue Agency has a multimillion dollar advertising campaign of its own right now. I will quote from the report today:

The Canada Revenue Agency is spending $6-million on a concentrated TV bulk buy this month that includes pricey NHL playoff spots in what internal government documents describe as a continuation of an existing campaign that’s been running all winter.

Under the Conservatives, the CRA has seen massive cuts that have caused service standards to plummet and Canadians to be left frustrated. The Conservatives have in fact closed all of the CRA service counters and allowed the backlog of complaints to rise to more than 35,000. Even CRA's internal audit shows that its telephone support lines for small businesses go largely unanswered or are giving out erroneous information. Despite these ongoing problems, the Conservatives have still managed to find millions of dollars to spend on TV ads this month, the very month that Canadians are most likely to need CRA's help and be left wanting more.

As the motion states, a great deal of these ads have been partisan in nature and have served very little in terms of real public interest. This abuse of tax dollars is an affront to Canadians who work hard and expect their government to treat their money with respect.

To clean up this mess, we need greater checks and balances in place. The government should be required to submit its advertising to a third-party review process to ensure that the ads are appropriate, proportional and a sensible use of public funds.

Canadians are angry, and rightly so. They have a government that is asking everyone to tighten their belts, while the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on self-promotion ads.

I would like to give just a few examples of wasteful Conservative advertising.

In May 2013, the Conservative government ran an ad during the Stanley Cup playoffs advertising the Canada jobs grants. The Advertising Standards Council of Canada declared that the ad was misleading and was a breach of the Canadian code of advertising standards because it omitted relevant information. It also neglected to mention that the program did not even exist. In fact, the government had not engaged the provinces on an area of shared jurisdiction.

The Conservative government has already spent nearly $12 million on ads to promote Canada's 150th birthday, an event that will not take place for another two years. The Conservatives also spent tens of millions of dollars promoting the Canada economic action plan three years after the program actually ended.

The Conservatives have also frequently purchased really expensive ads during the NHL playoffs, the Super Bowl and the Oscars, and when asked to explain, they refuse to reveal any details to Canadians about the cost. Canadians are right to wonder about the priorities of the Prime Minister and his Conservatives.

It comes down to priorities. The Conservatives have lost touch with what really matters to Canadian families. While the Conservatives spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars on partisan advertising, they are also shortchanging our veterans. They shut down nine veteran service centres across Canada. They have spent as much advertising veteran services, which the Auditor General says are not actually meeting the needs of the veteran community, as it costs to maintain these nine offices, which actually were serving veterans.

The Conservatives have also chosen economic action plan ads over measures that would actually create jobs. There are still almost 160,000 fewer jobs for young Canadians compared to 2008, before the downturn.

Students across Canada are struggling to find summer jobs that can help pay for their school. Instead of helping students out, the Conservative government has cut the number of jobs created by the Canada summer jobs program by more than half.

However, a single ad during the NHL playoffs could actually pay for more than 30 student jobs in the Canada summer jobs program. Instead of creating summer jobs for students who need the work to pay for their schooling, the government is instead wasting that money on partisan ads in the NHL playoffs.

It is an issue of priorities. The Conservatives are out of touch with the priorities of middle-class families. Taxpayers are in fact disgusted by the flagrant abuse of their tax dollars on these ads. The Conservatives must end this wasteful spending of tax dollars immediately. For a plan, they need look no further than to my Liberal colleague, the member for Ottawa South and his private member's Bill C-544. His legislation would end wasteful government advertising by requiring the ads be vetted by an independent, non-partisan body before they can be released. It is the right thing to do.

If the Conservatives fail to act, then Canadians will have to wait until a Liberal government, after the next election, brings in these measures that would take partisan politics out of government advertising, and put an end to this wasteful spending and abuse of tax dollars.

The Conservatives like to preach that government has a responsibility to communicate with Canadians, but they fail to mention that they also have a duty to taxpayers to ensure that the way in which we communicate to Canadians is ethical, economical and responsible. In this respect, the Conservatives have failed miserably.

A Liberal government, led by the member for Papineau, would clean up this mess, would put in place good governance to ensure that tax dollars are not wasted, and would ensure that the government is able to communicate with Canadians and provide valuable services to Canadians, while at the same time respecting tax dollars and ensuring the power of government is not abused for partisan purposes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

moved:

That the House: (a) recognize that (i) since 2006, the government has spent nearly $750 million dollars on advertising, (ii) a great deal of this has been partisan advertising that serves no public interest, (iii) this is an affront to taxpayers who work hard and expect that the government will treat their money with respect; and therefore (b) call on the government to submit all advertising to a third-party review process before it is approved, to ensure that it is an appropriate, proportional, and prudent expenditure of public funds.

I appreciate being allowed to proceed this morning with this important Liberal Party of Canada opposition day motion. I am very pleased to lead off this debate today. It is a very important moment for us as parliamentarians from all political stripes in the House. The theme I will come back to in a few moments is that it is an opportunity for us to do right by Canadians and to improve in an area where there is a need to improve, an area where I believe all parliamentarians can come together to improve a particular expenditure system in the federal government.

I want to begin by thanking my leader, the member for Papineau, for his probity, his support, his commitment to transparency and his commitment to doing something better going forward. Despite the performance and practice of any previous government, we have before us an opportunity to improve the situation when it comes to this notion of government advertising and communication.

I want to take a moment to reread this motion so Canadians get the fullness of its embrace. It reads:

That the House: (a) recognize that (i) since 2006, the government has spent nearly $750 million dollars on advertising, (ii) a great deal of this has been partisan advertising that serves no public interest, (iii) this is an affront to taxpayers who work hard and expect that the government will treat their money with respect; and therefore (b) call on the government to submit all advertising to a third-party review process before it is approved, to ensure that it is an appropriate, proportional, and prudent expenditure of public funds.

I have always believed that all parliamentarians have an obligation to do everything they can to enhance trust and confidence in our democratic institutions and processes. The motion tabled here today would build on that simple yet powerful notion, and is predicated on a simple and powerful idea: respect for Canadians' tax dollars and, arguably, respect for Canadians' intelligence.

We learned just this month that the “Strong Proud Free” slogan that is currently bombarding Canadian television viewers is considered a cabinet confidence, and will be sealed from public scrutiny for 20 years. This tells us that cabinet is seized with communications, with outreach, with messaging, with its alignment with its own political priorities. If we ever needed confirmation that the government is seized with sloganeering, there is no better evidence available. Now we have an insane situation where not only is the sloganeering overt and public, but we are being told it is being overt, public and secret.

It is time to bring Canada's federal government advertising rules into the 21st century, and there is a solution. In addition to this motion, on October 24, 2013, I tabled my private member's bill, Bill C-544, the elimination of partisan government advertising act.

My bill amends the Auditor General Act to provide for the appointment of an advertising commissioner to oversee the use of public funds for advertisement. Just like in Ontario, public interest messaging and other essential government advertising will not be targeted. Appointing an advertising commissioner will enhance accountability toward all Canadians. My bill will be up for debate on June 2, and I hope that all parties will support it.

Over the last several years, in a spirit of non-partisanship, I have written to two consecutive finance ministers and offered them my bill to adopt as government policy as a low- or no-cost budget suggestion. Sadly, they have not taken up this constructive suggestion that would save the taxpayers millions of dollars while costing almost nothing to implement.

There is a crescendo of voices now calling for action.

I would like to quote the Toronto Star from earlier this month, April 5, 2015:

Using taxpayer money to lure Canadians to vote Conservative in the next federal election is a bit rich.... In Ontario, the Auditor-General’s office must approve all government advertising to ensure that it doesn’t promote a particular political party. The same should be done in Ottawa. The...government should follow Ontario’s lead—and rein in some of its advertising spending while it’s at it.... [The member for Ottawa South] who is sponsoring a private member’s bill that would establish independent oversight of federal advertising, argues the...government ads—with their Conservative blue colours and imagery—amount to “propaganda.” He’s right.... The...government needs independent oversight of its advertising spending. And it needs to cut it, just as rigorously as it has cut so many more worthy initiatives.... Now documents obtained by CTV News indicate [the Prime Minister] plans to spend $7.5 million in May alone to promote its so-called Economic Action Plan. The new ad campaign is timed to air just after the release of the April 21 budget, and the government isn’t apologizing for it.

The ads continue to waste “money that could be better spent on important services and programs. Money spent publicizing the economic action this year, for example, would have been better spent promoting rail safety, based upon the lessons learned from the Lac-Mégantic disaster.”

The final numbers in 2013-14 illustrate this all too well. In that fiscal year, the current government spent $42 million on economic action plan advertising versus $34 million on rail safety, and this at a time when the government is in full knowledge of the human resources constraints, the lack of inspectors, the challenges with the transportation of oil by rail, the safety risks going through our urban settings, and on and on. This is the kind of choice it has been making, using taxpayer dollars.

The government could have kept the federally funded national round table on the environment and the economy operating.

The government could have ensured that our local Veterans Affairs offices stayed open to ensure that our veterans were properly supported and served after their service.

I am not suggesting there is not a place for federal advertising, to inform Canadians of new government policies or for public service announcements. There is a role, a legitimate role, for that. For example, governments need to recruit staff; governments need to hold competitions for contractors who are bidding on procurement opportunities to retrofit a building, to maintain roadways, to provide support for temporary staff or furniture fit-ups; or, for example, most important, to inform Canadians about important health issues or crises, such as the SARS crisis that hit Canada some years ago or the H1N1 viral outbreak. These are legitimate uses of taxpayer dollars for advertising.

However, what we are seeing, what we have concluded, and what, most importantly, Canadians have concluded is that most of the ads being propagated by the government are designed to promote the Conservative Party of Canada, simply, in its crudest form, to buy votes.

The common look and feel, the colours, of the Conservative Party of Canada's political ads and government advertising is indisputable. Advertising executives know it, and they tell us that these are aligned with the Conservative Party's political ad buys. At its core, this kind of advertising undermines the rules of fair play in our democratic system.

We spend a lot of our time in this country assisting governments elsewhere, perhaps less than we should. I would certainly like to see more of it as an investment made by Canada. However, we do spend time supporting fledgling democracies and political parties around the world to show the way. Canada is the beacon. If one is looking to a model of democratic fair play, one should look to Canada.

The problem is that the use of public resources in the advertising sector is an attempt to condition the Canadian public. How? It is done by propagating overt and subliminal messages. Why? That is simple. It is to drive up the government's chances of electoral success. It knows it. It is shameless about it. It does not deny it.

Here is another voice in support of that very assertion. Errol Mendes, professor of constitutional and international law at the University of Ottawa and editor-in-chief of the National Journal of Constitutional Law, wrote in The Globe and Mail recently:

Now in government—and outside the electoral period— [the Prime Minister] has found a way for his government to flood the media with partisan propaganda to the tune of hundreds of millions of our dollars. If such democratic subterfuge has the same effect of unfairness before an election, then the [Conservative] government is clearly undermining the spirit of a rule of law critical to fair elections. He has, in effect, made the government a third party that is allowed to spend potentially millions of dollars, making the actual limits in the election period illusory to some extent. This deserves a profound rebuke by Canadians.

Professor Mendes does not go as far as reminding Canadians about the litigation undertaken by the Prime Minister, before he was prime minister, before the Supreme Court of Canada arguing that there should be no limits on third-party advertising during Canadian electoral cycles. He lost that case, but we can see now what is happening is by subterfuge, using Professor Mendes' words. By subterfuge, he is using public resources to do precisely what he tried to do with private resources before he became Prime Minister.

According to Public Works and Government Services Canada, federal spending is still out of control. The government spent more than $75 million on advertising in 2013-14.

The departments that spend the most are Employment and Social Development Canada, which spent $11.7 million to promote its training programs; Natural Resources Canada, which spent $11 million on a campaign to promote responsible resource development; and the Department of Finance, which spent $10.5 million advertising the economic action plan. That $72.5 million is 9% higher than the amount spent in the previous fiscal year.

With such dire needs across the country, with seniors who have to choose between buying medicine and buying groceries, not a single government member can look his or her voters in the eye and defend this reckless spending on propaganda.

Let me expand on this.

With so many needs in this country, with seniors deciding whether to fill their prescriptions or buy groceries, with wait times for surgeries lengthening, with kids with type 1 diabetes unable to afford insulin pumps, with exhausted front-line nurses and crumbling infrastructure, no member in this House of Commons in any party can look their constituents in the eyes and defend this continued wasteful spending on propaganda, not a single one.

The Ontario Liberal government gets it. It continues to lead the way on this important issue. In fact, on Thursday, Ontario budget 2015 was presented to the legislative assembly of Ontario, and it included the following. The Government of Ontario:

will propose amendments to the Government Advertising Act, 2004, that would modernize and broaden the scope of the Act to ensure greater transparency about how the government communicates through advertisements and improve the process by which government advertisements are reviewed.

Therefore, it can be done.

The proposed amendments support the government’s commitment to openness, transparency and accountability in the way government conducts business, including public advertising.

Informed by the report of the Chief Electoral Officer, the Province will also move to strengthen rules around election-related, third-party advertising to protect the public interest.

The Ottawa Citizen reported in September that the federal government is spending millions targeting Canadians with Facebook ads.

In the Liberal Party's call for a third-party review process, there is a need to ensure that all forms of advertising are caught: print, video, audio, billboards, pamphlets, Internet, and increasingly, social media. The Conservatives have gone so far as to use ad spots on the XBox video game system, which is unheard of in Canadian history, by any order of government.

According to the Ottawa Citizen:

The Tory government spends tens of millions annually on advertising and has been assailed for what opposition parties say is often a waste of taxpayer dollars on propaganda. Part of the advertising blitz has included spending millions of dollars on government ads during the NHL playoffs.

Canadians are not being fooled. They are growing weary of and hostile to all the economic action plan ads. Ask them about the billboards, and then ask them how they feel about $29 million being spent on almost 9,800 billboards around this country. The City of Ottawa, my home city, was forced to spend $50,000 to erect these billboards as a condition of getting infrastructure dollars.

What does $29 million buy? It could buy over 500 full-time public health nurses for one year, over 300 affordable housing units for Canadians desperately waiting for housing, or 15,000 doses of chemotherapy drugs at a time when Canadians are suffering on cancer treatment waiting lists. That is what $29 million could buy for Canadians at a time when they are in need.

In fact, as reported in The Globe and Mail, eight polls commissioned by the Department of Finance between 2009 and 2012 “suggest the TV, radio, print and Internet ads are starting to fizzle—and annoying some people”.

In the most recently released survey, respondents say that it is “propaganda” and “a waste of money”, while fewer people than ever are taking any action after viewing the ads. These are the government's own polls.

Perhaps the government should listen to the taxpayers of Canada and stop wasting their money on partisan advertising. Perhaps it should also stop advertising programs that do not even exist, which is the newest twist in the saga of the use of taxpayer dollars for political purposes.

In closing, there is an opportunity for all of us to improve the way we manage and allocate scarce taxpayer resources. This is a discrete, focused opportunity to make sure that any government of any political stripe today and in the future treats taxpayers' dollars with respect.

I urge all of my colleagues to support the Liberal Party of Canada's motion to wrestle this challenge to the ground and to do right by Canadians.

Private Members' Business

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The Chair would like to take a moment to provide some information to the House regarding the management of private members' business.

As members know, after the order of precedence is replenished, the Chair reviews the new items so as to alert the House to bills which at first glance appear to impinge on the financial prerogative of the Crown. This allows members the opportunity to intervene in a timely fashion to present their views about the need for those bills to be accompanied by a royal recommendation.

Accordingly, following the March 30, 2015 replenishment of the order of precedence of 15 new items, I wish to inform the House that there is one bill that gives the Chair some concerns as to the spending provisions it contemplates.

It is Bill C-544, An Act to amend the Auditor General Act (government advertising), standing in the name of the member for Ottawa South.

I would encourage hon. members who would like to make arguments regarding the need for a royal recommendation for this bill or any of the other bills now in the order of precedence to do so at an early opportunity.

I thank honourable members for their attention.