Mr. Speaker, that is more time than I thought I had. This will allow me to tell some of the anecdotes that I wanted to share in this debate on my Liberal colleague's bill concerning government advertising, which seems to be increasingly partisan. For example, consider the 2011 election when the Conservative Party slogan was used in the election advertising.

For those watching at home, the bill would give the Auditor General more powers. That was done in Australia and Ontario, despite the best efforts of the Ontario Liberals to relax the law in recent months. This bill would give the Auditor General more powers to check advertising content in order to ensure that it is not partisan.

This is a really interesting issue because it affects the average Canadian during the playoffs, for example. The playoffs are not over yet, despite what I heard today. When there is no Canadian team left, we sometimes forget that the playoffs can last a fairly long time. The Stanley Cup finals will start this week.

On a more serious note, two months ago I went to visit my father in Beloeil to watch the hockey game with my father, stepmother, younger sister and two brothers. At one point, my father went into another room where he could still hear the TV. During the commercial break, we heard the same government ad not twice, but three times. When my father came back into the room, he asked whether he had really heard the same government ad three times. I told him he had, and that that was how the government was spending his money. He asked me how much these ads had cost and I told him that we were talking about several million dollars.

It was recently announced that $7.5 million had been set aside, but that does not include the approximately $70 million that has been spent in recent years. That is some pretty extravagant spending.

Obviously, during a hockey game, these ads play over and over and cost a lot of money. We repeatedly saw the same ads, and my family thought that it was absurd that all of the programs announced were accompanied by an asterisk and the disclaimer that those programs were subject to parliamentary approval. It is ridiculous to have such expensive ads for programs that have not yet even been approved by Parliament.

The government will argue that it is no big deal since it has a majority. That shows just how much arrogance and partisanship is wrapped up in those ads. To top it off, the programs are not even available to people yet.

Of course, as others have pointed out in this debate, some of the ads are for programs that do not even exist.

Those programs are a problem because, as we have also mentioned, that money would be better spent elsewhere considering all of the money the government spends and the cuts it has made. For example, we are trying to help people in our ridings who spend hours on hold with Service Canada. There have also been cuts to veterans' services and the CBC, among others. Cut after cut, they keep telling us that it is about accountability and a balanced budget.

In my opinion, that message is a very hard one for people to hear and accept. When they watch television, they see ads. The ads are all over the Internet and on YouTube too. People also see economic action plan signs on the side of the highway all over the place making a big show of the government's so-called record. This is very worrisome.

Every political party understands that, when it is in power, it has a responsibility to spend taxpayers' money wisely. Obviously, that sometimes includes making tough budgetary choices, but the public has far more respect for those choices if the government does not turn around and spend the money on advertising, especially during an election year, but that goes without saying.

The advertised programs are the cornerstone of the Conservative Party election platform, which makes it harder for the public to accept such spending. The number of times we hear people talk about this brings me back to what I was saying at the beginning of my speech. Everyone is talking about this, even those who do not follow politics very closely. They see that something does not add up in the way the government is using money for its ads, especially, as I said, in the context of reduced services.

This is even more troubling when we listen to question period. It is often a sorry spectacle of Liberals and Conservatives debating who was the worst government when it comes to certain issues. Immigration is an example of an issue where they wonder who was the biggest failure. Partisan advertising is another example of that, really. It is nothing new and the Conservative government insists on following the sorry example of the previous Liberal governments when it comes to misspending on advertising and all the fees that come with it. Canadians are concerned about this, which is all the more reason for us to support this bill.

It is also important to mention the Australian example. A law was passed in 1995, but it was recently amended, in 2010, because there was a problem with the auditor general's mandate with respect to the approval of government advertising and ensuring that the advertising is not partisan. Thus, the work in committee will be extremely important so that we do not make the same mistakes and to ensure that, by giving these powers to the Auditor General, he or she will be able to properly do this work and make sure that the advertising is not partisan. This is very worrisome issue. As I mentioned several times, Canadians are concerned about it.

In closing, it is important to point out that this just makes Canadians more cynical. When we go door-to-door and talk with the people in our ridings, we often see that they are cynical. That has been one of my greatest disappointments since going into politics. Using public money for partisan advertising of a party's record, instead of using it to inform Canadians of what the government is doing, only fuels cynicism.

That is a very good reason to pass this bill and put an end to this practice. Of course, we must do our job in committee to ensure that the Auditor General can do what we are asking him to do with this bill.

Matthew Dubé