Taking its cue from the Conservative Party, the Liberals Party is attempting to turn the tables on reckless, unjustified and overtly partisan political ads masquerading simply as useful public information (meted out to the public at taxpayer expense, of course).
The Liberals said people are angry about what they view as wasteful government spending, and they wanted to remind Canadians how much the Tories have spent since 2006.
“After 10 years, Stephen Harper thinks he owns the government — he doesn’t. The people of Canada do,” Liberal party spokesman Olivier Duchesneau said.
The party would not disclose how much they are spending on the limited Stanley Cup playoff ad buy.
As usual, the government is showing its egregious contempt for the intelligence of the public:
The Conservative government defended the spending.Let's hope the above whopper sets everyone's spider sense tingling.
“Advertising is a key way for the government to inform Canadians about important issues such as tax credits and public health issues," said Stephanie Rea, spokeswoman for Treasury Board President Tony Clement.
They need to do more of this Lorne. The opposition has given the CONs a free ride with their silence and there is so many blunders, untruths, out and out lies coming from the CONs, that the opposition has extensive information to work with.
ReplyDeleteThey certainly have a deep well to draw upon, Pamela. Let's see what they do with it.
DeleteLet's not forget that until fairly recently the Libs literally lacked the financial resources to do so, and the NDP for whatever reason decided they weren't going to use whatever they were raising for this purpose either.; There is of course massive amounts of material to do this with, the problem has been being able to get them heard in the massive din the CPC creates between their occasional party ads and their massive government spending on ads for programs which do not exist. It is one thing to advertize for something which has actually been created and implemented, you can make a defence for that, even in the ham handed way the Harper government does it. There can be NO defence for making ads about programs that are fictional, in that they have not been passed by Parliament, in some cases not even introduced to Parliament just announced to be introduced and already the ads are there.
DeleteThis is one of the main reasons the way the Harper government abuses the resource of government is so dangerous to any democratic system of government. It creates such a dominance for one party that it drowns out anyone unable to compete on a level or near level capacity, and until Trudeau took over the Libs they haven't been able to fundraise anywhere near enough to create a matching war chest since the end of the Chretien/Martin period. The NDP, for all their much vaunted electoral gains have not seen the equivalent in fundraising gains, especially when compared to the third place as of last election Liberals, and they clearly have not been willing to use their resources for such ads either, despite being the Official Opposition, despite their claims of being the true government in waiting.
This ad was clear, clever, and pointed, yet did so without the darkness that tends to permeate any CPC ads about their opponents. This is the sort of thing we need to see more of, and a lot more of. Let's hope this was not just an isolated test case and more of the beginnings of the long needed fact checking of the Harper government for the Canadian public and the deception machine that the Canadian government under Harper aka the Harper government, has become.
The Harper regime has proven time and time again, Scotian, that it will stop at nothing to retain power, but the savagery of their attack ads, I hope, will reach a saturation point with voters. As you say, the Liberal ad above does not embrace that darkness but effectively gets its point across. Perhaps the kind of mockery it engages in is the best strategy to deflate our pompous and very dangerous overlords.
DeleteOne thing that most dictators and those wannabes in western nations seem to have the hardest time with dealing is ridicule and biting humour/satire of their policies and their actions. That is one of the best ways to go after the Harper regime in my view, and I am hoping that the Libs have worked that out as a major part of their contrast/attack component while they try to stay relatively clean on the attack politics, especially as compared to the Harper CPC machine. We shall see, but this was clearly a good start.
DeleteI'm also hoping that their wildly overblown fixation on all things Trudeau comes and bites them on the butts as well. Bad enough some of what they try and do with Justin Trudeau, but lately the amount of times they have been going to the well of his father, a PM out of power for over 30 years, and dead for 15, well that I suspect to pretty much everyone outside that narrow CPC base that hates Trudeau comes off as creepy, demented, and deranged. There is the reality that PET is still seen by the vast majority of Canadians as the best PM we ever had in our history, and that his legacy on balance was one of the best ever, so getting that deranged about it looks bad enough, and the fact they have to go back 30 years and essentially ignore the Chretien/Martin economic record to try and claim superior economic management credentials also I suspect comes off looking a bit desperate. Again, we shall see.
While I was never a big fan of Trudeau père, Scotian, one thing is undeniable: he believed in the power of government for the greater good, and he believed in the importance of a centralized vision.
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