Original story via: The National Post — The federal New Democrats have launched a pair of stinging new online ads targeting the Conservatives and Prime Minister Stephen Harper over their promises to clean up government and highlighting repeated Tory politicians who’ve run into legal trouble.
The ad, titled “Enough,” is set to ominous background music and highlights some of the legal challenges faced by Conservative politicians and key aides to Harper since the Tories took office in 2006.
“Have you had enough?” says the female voiceover in the ad. “It’s time for change in Ottawa.”
The paid ads are being targeted through social media at voters in ridings in Ontario and across the West that the NDP believes it can wrest away from the Conservatives.
And the party intends to follow up with a ground assault next week, sending leader Tom Mulcair on an eight-day tour of some of the most fertile of those ridings in the crucial battleground of Ontario.
The tour is expected to include ridings in the Greater Toronto Area, southwestern Ontario and the northern Ontario riding of Kenora, where former provincial NDP leader Howard Hampton is taking on Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford.
The double-barrelled offensive is aimed at building on the party’s breakthrough success in the 2011 election by targeting some of the 106 ridings where the NDP finished second to the Tories. And it’s designed to leave voters fed up with the Harper regime in no doubt about which opposition party, buoyed by momentum in the polls, is taking the fight directly to the Conservatives.
The online ads, one in English, the other in French, are the most negative produced by the NDP since Mulcair became leader and come just two weeks after Mulcair vowed to eschew personal attacks.
While he deemed “robust debate” comparing policies and track records to be within bounds, Mulcair said earlier this month: “The personal stuff — that’s just not my cup of tea. I don’t go down that street.”
Some of the targets in the latest ads might beg to differ.
The ad targets Tory Sen. Irving Gerstein, head of Conservative fundraising, who faced Elections Act charges (which were eventually dropped) in the so-called “in and out” campaign finance case that saw the Conservative party fined for breaking election spending limits in the 2006 campaign.
It also takes aim at the Tories over election fraud that happened in the 2011 campaign, noting former Conservative campaign staffer Michael Sona was sent to jail for his role in the robocalls affair.
Bruce Carson, a longtime former ally of Harper who worked in the Prime Minister’s Office, has been charged with illegal lobbying, the ad notes.
Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau also make an appearance in the ad for their charges of fraud and breach of trust related to alleged improper Senate living expenses, as does Pamela Wallin, who is under RCMP investigation for her travel expense claims.
The ad also features the photos of a dozen current and former Conservative senators whose Senate expenses are being reviewed by the RCMP following the auditor general’s damning report released last month.
And the ad closes with Dean Del Mastro, a former parliamentary secretary to Harper, being led off by police in handcuffs and shackles after he was convicted last month of electoral fraud and sentenced to one month in jail.
Del Mastro spent one night in jail and is out on bail, pending his appeal of his conviction.