Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest, but I noticed one area that the member failed to mention, which is the tens of millions of dollars spent by the Conservative government promoting the oil and gas sector in the United States. In one year alone, $40 million was spent on ads in subways.
The Conservatives may be able to defend that by saying they are standing up for a particular sector, but if we take a look at what some of their messages are, we become concerned. One was that Canada is one of the few major suppliers of crude oil in the Gulf coast taking concrete action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is not a lot of truth in that ad. They also stated that America and Canada have the same the greenhouse gas reduction targets. That might have been true a few years ago, but the Prime Minister has been clear that is absolutely not the case anymore. One thing that the Gomery commission pointed out was that it wanted annual mandatory audits and value-for-money evaluations of all advertising campaigns. When that campaign was analyzed, it was found that there was no understanding what the message was, other than that Americans and Canadians were friends.
Could the member speak to what the value for money was in spending taxpayer money promoting one singular sector and not others?