The federal Conservatives have unveiled a television ad that will begin running in Quebec this week, attacking Liberal leader Stephane Dion for his stance on the fiscal imbalance.
The ad, in French only, is fairly simple in production. It shows a montage of headlines from Quebec newspapers that offered support for the recent federal budget and its benefits for the province.
The budget promised to solve the fiscal imbalance through a new equalization formula. Through the formula, Quebec will receive a windfall of hundreds of millions in new money based on its population.
The ad also pokes fun at a quote Dion made in 2002 in which he said the fiscal imbalance was a myth. It ends with the words "Why go back?'' followed by the slogan: "With the Conservatives, Quebec gains strength.''
Environment Minister John Baird and Industry Minister Maxime Bernier told reporters in Ottawa Monday that the ad campaign is meant to highlight Dion's "out-of-date views on federalism and the fiscal imbalance."
"In short, Stephane Dion is an extreme centralizer, an Ottawa politician who has never recognized the fiscal imbalance," Baird said. "He's a man Quebecers cannot trust to keep their hands off their hard-won gains."
Baird explained that they are launching the ad because Dion seems eager for election, insisting that the Conservative party is not.
"Dion voted against the budget and by default, for a spring election," Baird said. "Dion has an urge to campaign. We, on the other hand, have a genuine desire to govern."
The NDP also voted against the budget. The sovereigntist Bloc Quebecois supported the budget.
The two Tory ministers insisted that while their party doesn't want a spring election, it is preparing for one by spending the next two weeks fanning out across the country to talk about the party's agenda, while Parliament is on Easter break.
The announcement about the ad campaign was also a rare opportunity for the Conservatives to show off their new campaign headquarters.
The headquarters is a massive, 17,000-square-foot war room in an Ottawa suburb, complete with its own TV studio.
"I sincerely hope we won't have to use this facility until 2009," Baird told invited reporters. "But should the Opposition force an election, the Conservative Party will be ready."
Election imminent?
Bernie Gauthier, an Ottawa media consultant, told Â鶹´«Ã½net he didn't think the Conservatives would be spending all this money on advertising if they didn't think an election would be imminent.
"If we see that all of a sudden we see the amount of advertising goes down, that might be an indication that they're going to hold off a little bit for perhaps an election in a few months," he said.
On the ads themselves, Gauthier said they were very basic.
"These ads are not going to win any awards for creativity," he said, especially compared to the first round of anti-Dion TV ads the Conservatives ran in Quebec.
"They're cookie-cutter ads that use a proven formula of some headlines out of context, some quotes out of context and a scary-looking picture of the opposing leader."
In terms of the effectiveness of such ads, Gauthier said the risk is they promote a backlash.
"Why they work is that they basically put the other leader on the defensive, so they make it very hard for a new leader like Stephane Dion to emerge and say 'this is what I stand for' ...," he said.
"Instead, he has to respond to a series of attack ads, which puts him at a real disadvantage."
