Those are extensive questions, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to keep talking until you tell me that my time has run out because he has asked for some very broad discussion and I am happy to engage in that.
There were a number of areas in which we said at the beginning of our mandate that we were going to see some increased spending. We looked at how the Department of National Defence had been ravaged through the Liberal years. Men and women were going to other countries in very significant and dangerous situations without equipment that could bolster what they were doing. They were literally embarrassed to be on a campaign in the field with the types of equipment they had, and when the numbers of our military, both regular and reserve, had dropped to precipitously low levels, we said we were going to increase funding significantly to the Department of National Defence, and we have done that.
As a matter of fact, in the years leading out to 2014, even though there is going to be a modification to the growth of defence spending, it is still going to grow. We are admitting that right up front. We do not apologize for that. That is a very significant part of the growth in expenditure that my hon. friend just raised.
We also looked at the public security situation across the country and listened carefully to provinces and municipalities, who were asking for the resources to build up, basically, the number of officers in uniform on the streets in our municipalities and towns across the country. We made a commitment to do that and we did. We make no apologies for that.
When we go to advertise government programs, it takes money to do that. For example, when the H1N1 situation was upon us and people were beginning to panic and wonder what we are doing with our vaccination program, it took money to advertise that type of program. That is one of many examples of the use of government advertising.