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Regional - Canadian political attack ads a nuisance
Commentary by Joe McWilliams
for Smoky River Express
If there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s Canadian political attack ads distracting me when I’m enjoying a football game.
Monday Night Football on TV is a treat, because I happen to have the tube to myself. Well, for the first half of the game, at least. Weekends I’m too busy or too distracted to watch much football. But Monday night. Ahhhh.
So there I was, on the opening Monday night of the NFL season, watching the Patriots and the Bills go at it. Tom Brady, probably the greatest quarterback of our generation, is back, and things are looking good.
I’m just getting into the groove and am blind-sided by Tory ad slamming federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff as some sort of sleazy self-promoter. ‘Do you really want to vote for somebody who’s only in it for himself?’ – or something along those lines.
Well…. First of all, I wasn’t aware there was an election on. Has Canadian politics sunk so low that the party in power resorts to dirty attacks at the first sign an election might be coming?
Second, who’s paying for those ads? Advertising on Monday Night Football is very expensive. And this ad came on again and again, at the nifty price – according to a TSN advertising official – of $8,000 each time it popped up. I saw it four or five times, and that was in just over half a game.
The Conservative Party, of course, is free to spend its money however it likes – and that had better be party money and not public money.
The Tories will say that the Liberals started it. Fair enough. Ignatieff stirred things up by declaring his party is no longer interested in supporting the current minority government. I’m not saying the Liberals are any less dirty than the Tories. I don’t like attack ads generally, but in this case, the government’s is the sleazier of the ad campaigns. It is undignified behaviour for a government, to say the least.
If the prime minister and his crew want to take the gloves off, he should suspend parliament, call and election and go at it. Otherwise, the business of government is to govern, not to waste time, money and good will in firing low blows at the opposition just because it might force an election sometime soon.
The Tory attack ads on Ignatieff didn’t just start, of course. They’re just the latest salvo, going back almost a year. It’s a calculated risk, obviously. The Tories’ pollsters must be telling their bosses that such ads work, or they wouldn’t be using them.
To me they are an indication of how low, how pathetic Canadian politics has become.
One thing’s for sure, I won’t vote for anybody who engages in such trashy tactics. Luckily, in the Canadian system, I don’t have the opportunity to vote directly for the prime ministerial candidate. Honesty, dignity – these are the qualities, among others, I’d like to see in political leaders. And they are nowhere to be seen in the current climate of low-blow attack advertising.
If the Conservatives don’t like this sort of criticism, tough luck. They asked for it by putting their dumb ads on Monday Night Football.
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