Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech.
He made it very clear that all of the money the government is currently spending on partisan advertising could have been spent on funds that would actually help Canadians meet their needs. Advertising dollars could be used to explain programs that actually exist, but this government is spending more money on programs that do not yet exist and on partisan advertising. My colleague spent a lot of time talking about a slogan that, strangely enough, is being used by the Conservative Party to explain other programs that are not partisan. This is all really confusing.
What really worries me today is that this motion was moved by a party that has a history of spending taxpayers' money on partisan advertising. This is what the then auditor general said:
Between 1998-99 and 2002, the federal government [which was a Liberal government] ran more than 2,200 advertising activities with contracts valued at about $793 million, making it one of the larger advertisers in the country.
It was the Liberals who did that. For decades now, we have gone from one government to another that both use the same tactics: taking taxpayers' money to pay for partisan advertising. I find it absurd that that party is the one proposing these changes today.
What does my colleague think of the fact that it is the Liberals, who also used partisan advertising, who are proposing this motion?