Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to stand in this place today and talk to this issue. What we have heard here today and we have heard over the course of the last number of months, both in and outside of the House, is a lot of commentary by members of the opposition parties, and that commentary, and this motion in fact, is nothing more than political posturing and political rhetoric.
That is to be expected. We all understand this is a political place, that many times members of the opposition will raise questions or raise objections for strictly partisan reasons, and this issue really fits that bill. As we have seen time and time again in this place, members particularly of the official opposition, members of the Liberal Party, try to create scandals where no scandal exists. The same thing can be said for this issue.
We have heard today, and we have heard over the course of the last number of weeks, a number of arguments raised by members of the opposition, which they say demonstrate the Conservative Party did in some fashion break electoral laws. I will take a number of those arguments, raised both by members of the opposition and by Elections Canada itself, speak to them and try to demonstrate to the House that those arguments are completely unfounded and baseless.
The first argument is that the Conservative Party somehow overspent the national advertising limit by transferring money to local campaigns and those campaigns then ran national ads. The argument then goes that the national ad that was run in a local riding should not be considered a local ad at all, that it should be considered a national ad, which would mean the Conservative Party overspent its limit.
First, as we heard here today, that is entirely false. Local candidates can choose to run ads that help get them elected. They can determine whether they want to run a national ad promoting the party, the prime minister or national policies if they feel it is in their best interest for their electoral success, or they can run an ad strictly locally, promoting themselves as the local candidate and perhaps on local issues.
However, it is their choice, and that is not only an opinion that I share, but it is stated in candidates' handbooks, printed by Elections Canada, which give clear guidelines to all candidates in elections. In that handbook it says quite clearly that candidates have the option of running either local messages or national messages. It is their choice. The only caveat is that if they choose to run a national ad, they tag it appropriately by saying “authorized by the official agent on behalf of”, and then the name of the candidate.
This is quite common. All political parties have done exactly the same thing time and time again.