Government Operations committee  I think I would summarize it with two words, and they are “independence” and “transparency”, and those are the goals that any advertising policy should strive for.

Government Operations committee  That's an excellent point. I think it's important to remember that the ban on government advertising excludes those things you mentioned. It excludes advertisements for jobs, tenders, health matters, and emergencies. The point you raise is a really tough and really important one

Government Operations committee  You've touched on two things. One is the harm principle sort of thing, which, you're right, absolves the government of the harm principle, and it says that governments meet the test, and in fact are positive, so that's a check mark. But there's also the financial implications and

Government Operations committee  To that I would add that government advertising serves a number of purposes, and I would carve that up in a slightly different way. I would say there were contentious and non-contentious issues. The vast majority of advertising is on non-contentious issues, and people don't have

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. My comments were directly pulled from the changes in the policy on communications and federal identity. I will be happy to provide written comments which will make that clearer.

Government Operations committee  One of the realities of a Westminster tradition, of course, is this idea of confidence. Within the Westminster tradition is the caretaker convention, which suggests that government would suspend all activities until they have the confidence in the House. Presumably during the ele

Government Operations committee  Given the fact that much communication transcends geographic boundaries, I think the only way to make it enforceable is if you agreed with the principle, and I think the principle is pretty difficult to refute. During election campaigns we all agree that we shouldn't advertise be

Government Operations committee  We may also find that if such an instrument were imposed, it would change the behaviour of the government. They might cluster by-elections to avoid that.

Government Operations committee  The reality is that, for the average citizen, trying to digest information is a bit like trying to drink from a fire hydrant. You have this torrent of information coming in and it's hard to discriminate between what's important and what's not. I don't think governments and many

Government Operations committee  That's another great example of something we talked about earlier, that the $500,000 is a big campaign in traditional media. As you pointed out, it's not a lot of money—

Government Operations committee  Pardon me. It is a lot of money in ethnic media, and it is certainly a huge amount of money on digital platforms. What I think that raises for this committee is whether that $500,000 threshold is too high, and whether you may want to lower that to encapsulate both the trend towa

Government Operations committee  The institution of the ASC could easily be transplanted in a small officer of Parliament office that is responsible to Parliament. It doesn't have to be a big bureaucracy. I understand the apprehension of the Auditor General, and I think that was felt in Ontario, but they quickly

Government Operations committee  Yes, I think it was great with the health scare for H1N1 influenza and the mandatory vaccination. I'm talking about provincial ones. I think those are really warranted. I think that tourism ads are probably useful, but the amount of money spent on advertising external to Canad

Government Operations committee  I think the definition you have is good, except I would say “proposes to pay for media” instead of “pays for media”, because it would make items reviewable if governments gave a donation to community groups or organizations that, then, subsidized an event and it resulted in an ad

Government Operations committee  Sorry, I am not referring to members' householders, but rather government householders about a specific policy.