Mr. Speaker, it is one thing to advertise a government program when it has passed in this House and exists; it is another to advertise a government program when it is being considered by Parliament. According to government policy, which my colleague talked so much about in his speech, if one puts out a video, it must contain the words “measures subject to parliamentary approval”.
I have a case where the government has not followed the spirit of its policy. Last year, November 17 was the day of the Whitby—Oshawa by-election, and if we wanted to read an online article in the local newspaper, we had to pass through a gateway advertisement. It was a little tiny box with a video. The video contained a government advertisement about its spending plans. It was so small that we could not read the words “measure subject to parliamentary approval”.
I do not think the current government wanted to follow its own policies, and perhaps diluted the message that this video was sending on that by-election day. It was clear to me that nobody in those two seconds could read the fuzzy words. In fact, I had to go to the government website itself and look at the full high-definition ad to actually see the words. The government was not following the spirit of its own policies, and I wonder if my colleague would agree with me.