Pierre Poilievre rejects criticism over taxpayer-funded 'vanity videos'

Employment Minister Pierre Poilievreis drawing fire for usingtaxpayerdollars toproducevideos of himself promoting the government's proposed enhancementsto theuniversal child-care benefit, but says he has no reason to apologize.

During Friday's question period in theHouse of Commons,NDP deputy leader Megan Leslieaccused Poilievreof "shamelessly using public resources for vanity videos,"demanding he sayhow much he spentto produce "these partisanself-promotional videos."

• Taxpayer group urges Tories to stop pumping public money into partisan ads

Liberal MP David McGuinty also piled on,asking when theConservativeswouldstop "bilkingtaxpayers for partisan self-promotion."

But Poilievreshot back, saying that the NDP and Liberals just want to keep parents in the dark aboutthe government's proposalsbecause those parties, he said, want to take thosechild-carebenefits away.

"I make no apologies for informing parents of the expanded universal child-carebenefit," he said.

One of the videos showsPoilievreon Parliament Hill discussing how parents will benefit from proposedenhancement to the child-care benefit.

In another video,Poilievreis shown going up to parents at aclothing sale in an Ottawa arena,also talking about thechild-care benefit.

Pierre Nolet, a spokesman forEmployment and Social Development, said in a statement to CBC News that the Ottawa arenavideo was produced inhouseand filmed onApril 26, a Sunday, which involved two hours of overtime.

"Compensation for overtime is covered under the collective bargaining agreement," Nolet said.

Christine van Geyn,Ontario director of theCanadian Taxpayers Federation, said defining the difference between government and partisan messagingcan be subjective. Butthegovernment should only be using tax resources toprovideinformation toCanadiansand not to self-promote, she said.

"The reason for governmentadvertisingis toinform the public of something to informthe public you can invest in your RRSPat this time, to informthe public that the tax deadline is this day," she said.

'Pure partisanship'

"Even with Poilievreon the child-care benefit, it'suseful toinform the public that you're entitled to claim a child-care benefit. But to walk around your riding talkingto yourconstituents, glad-handingwith people?Thatad to me is pure partisanship."

Instead, van Geyn said, she favours a third party reviewsystem, much like what's currently used in Ontario, where the auditor general has the power to disapprove ads determined to bepartisan under a set of criteria.

In 2013,McGuintyintroduced a private member'sbill toappoint a federal advertising commissioner whowould work within the Office of the Auditor General to review all proposed government advertising for potentially partisan content.

However, Alex Marland, an associateprofessor of political science, said he doesn't agree a review committee would necessarily be the best solution.

"This needs to be more public than just a review committee," saidMarland, who is writing a book aboutbranding in Canadian government and politics. "Who appoints the members of the review committee? What we need is very clearly identified criteria that anybody can look at. You should be able to pick something up and say, 'Here'sthe policy,does it fit this or not?'I'm justnot sure why a reviewcommitteeneeds to interpret that."

"Ithink if we had a public list we could all be scrutinizingthese things," he said.