Mr. Speaker, I will make my remarks brief. The NDP does support the principle of the bill and what the hon. member is trying to get at as presented today in the House.

We do believe that taking ownership of an ad by riding candidates, for local ads, and political parties for nationally paid ads, as well as third-party advertisers, may have some beneficial effect to dampening nasty and childish attack ads. It may also create some incentive to make sure that ads are about the legitimate contrast of policies and capacities. They may well end up, as the hon. member outlined, allowing people to be clearer about where messages are coming from and making their choices more reflectively.

It is also important that he has added the provision to have these rules apply outside of the election period. That is very important, although I do take notice of what was just argued from the other side of the House; there does appear to be a loophole for electoral district associations outside of that period.

However, I do have one major concern. It is philosophical, but it plays itself out in the legislation. The member has borrowed from the U.S., without it seems taking into account the differences in our political systems. He would require that local candidates do “stand by your ad” voice-overs or image video presentations. That is fine, as people are indeed electing local candidates to be local MPs. However, for national party ads, he would have the party leader do the “stand by your ad” as a requirement, rather than having the political party or an authorized spokesperson for the party.

The reason this matters philosophically is that this could encourage an unhealthy and inappropriate focus on what is already an overly deepened phenomenon in our country, that is, a focus on the party leader and on personalities of party leaders at the expense of how our Westminster tradition actually works. We should be thinking about the composition of Parliament under our current system as a series of MPs elected from local ridings, where the leader, however already picked by convention of the party, must be confirmed by MPs in the House, showing that leader their support.

Canada is not a republic, and party leaders are ultimately ordinary MPs. The U.S. presidential and gubernatorial system must not be used to influence our own system. Therefore, I do hope that if this goes to committee, we will discuss whether the provisions in the bill inadvertently focus too much attention on party leaders as somehow the end-all and be-all, thus contributing to an unhealthy “presidentialization” of our politics that is already well under way, especially assisted by the way that the media reports on national politics.

Craig Scott

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