Working Families coalition haunts Tories with new ad

Patrick Brown is depicted as cartoon weather vane whose views are always changing

The Working Families coalition — presumed dead just a few months ago thanks to new restrictions on campaign spending — has sprung back to life with an advertising blitz to plague the Progressive Conservatives.

Bankrolled by unions, Working Families helped swing the 2003, 2007, 2011and 2014 Ontario elections to the Liberals with attack ads against the Conservatives.

With an election set for June 7, 2018, the coalition is taking aim at rookie PC Leader Patrick Brown.

In a new 30-second spot hitting airwaves Tuesday, Working Families depicts Brown as a cartoon weather vane atop the Legislative Assembly whose views on key issues are constantly changing.

“Patrick Brown will say anything to get elected. He now says he’s pro-choice, but when it counted, Patrick Brown had a 100-per-cent prolife voting record,” the announcer intones.

“He now says he supports equal marriage, but when it counted he voted against it,” he continues against the backdrop of a legislature that looks like a haunted house complete with stormy skies and thunderbolts.

“He now says he welcomes labour into his party, but when it counted his votes hurt working people. When it counts for us, Patrick Brown can’t be counted on. He just blows with the winds of political opportunity.”

The ad echoes the successful Conservative weather vane commercials used to bash former Liberals leaders Lyn McLeod and Dalton McGuinty before the 1995 and 1999 elections. In those spots, McLeod and McGuinty were caricatured as feckless and indecisive by shifting their positions on key issues.

Working Families’ Patrick Dillon, business manager and secretary treasurer of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, said public- and privatesector unions, including Unifor, are bankrolling the ads.

Dillon said the unions are concerned about Brown’s votes on abortion, same-sex marriage and labour issues when he was a Conservative MP in Ottawa.

“Patrick Brown’s track record at the federal level — in all three of those categories — is not a good one,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean that he can’t change, but he’s got to say that he’s changed . . . and put policies out there that show that he’s changed.”

Tory MPP Todd Smith (Prince Edward—Hastings) predicted such union-funded broadsides against the party will not resonate the way they once did.

“Most of these organizations that have advertised against us in the past realize that we do have common ground that we can work on with them,” Smith said.

“We’re not going to back up the Brink’s truck for them, but certainly there are things that we can work on as a party to make their lives better and make their employees’ lives better,” he said.

“There is a general understanding that the PC Party under Patrick Brown is a different party. We want to extend the olive branch (to labour).”

Earlier this month, a separate group called Working Ontario Women — funded by the Service Employees International Union — launched its own ads blasting the Tories.