Tory attack ad on Trudeau bonanza for charity
Canadian Liver Foundation taken aback by flood of donations
OTTAWA — The Canadian Liver Foundation has seen a flood of donations since a Conservative attack ad featuring video footage of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau doing a striptease at a foundation fundraiser aired earlier this week.
Canadian Liver Foundation vicepresident Melanie Kearns said that since Monday, the organization had received twice as many unsolicited donations as it normally receives in a month.
Of that, about 200 were made specifically on behalf of Trudeau, totalling nearly $10,000.
The 30-second Tory attack ad, which aired within hours of Trudeau being named Liberal leader on Sunday, shows him removing his tie, jacket and shirt at a 2011 foundation fundraiser while spectators bid to go on a lunch date with him.
Many analysts believe the ad, which features circus music and funny captions amid questions about Trudeau’s ability to lead, was designed to raise money for the Conservative Party.
While he has described the ad as a “low blow,” Trudeau said this week he was “pleased” the liver foundation has been receiving many more donations in the aftermath.
Kearns admitted the foundation was taken aback by the unexpected attention this week, and “ultimately we hope this puts a spotlight on liver disease.”
The foundation released a report this month that highlighted the lack of a national strategy to combat liver disease even though one in 10 Canadians has some form of the disease and the death rate has risen nearly 30 per cent over the past eight years.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a swipe at Trudeau on Wednesday after the latter talked about the need “to look at the root causes” that led to this week’s terrorist attack in Boston.
In an interview with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge that aired Tuesday, Trudeau was asked how he would have responded to the attacks that killed three people and left about 170 injured.
Trudeau said he would offer the Americans material support “and at the same time, over the coming days, we have to look at the root causes.”
“Yes, there’s a need for security and response,” he added. “But we also need to make sure that as we go forward, that we don’t emphasize a culture of fear and mistrust. Because that ends up marginalizing even further those who already are feeling like they are enemies of society.”
In London where he was attending former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s funeral Wednesday, Harper indicated Trudeau’s answer was unacceptable.
“When you see this kind of action, when you see this kind of violent act, you do not sit around trying to rationalize it or make excuses for it or figure out its root causes,” Harper said.
“You condemn it categorically and to the extent that you can deal with the perpetrators you deal with them as harshly as possible and that is what this government would do if it ever was faced with such actions.”
Asked to explain his comments Wednesday, Trudeau repeated his condolences to the victims and their families.
“Obviously we have to make sure that as we move forward,” he said, “we look at creating a safe community, a safe country, a safe world for all citizens and all individuals, and that happens with both security and with a significant commitment to peace as highlighted in our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Earlier in the day, Trudeau marked his first caucus meeting as leader with a tribute to the charter, which his father championed exactly 31 years earlier.
Escorted into the meeting room by a throng of clapping, cheering staff and parliamentarians, Trudeau said his party’s support for the charter was one thing that separated Liberals from Conservatives and New Democrats.
“The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is at the centre of what it means to be a Liberal,” he said.
“Conservatives talk a good game about being a party of freedom. But they are mistrustful of the mechanisms that actually ensure those free- doms for Canadians. And that’s why they don’t celebrate the charter.”
The Harper government was criticized for not marking the charter’s 25th anniversary in 2007, or its 30th anniversary last year.
Some Conservatives have argued the document empowers individuals at the cost of the societal good, though the prime minister told reporters in Chile last year that constitutional “divisions” were more to blame for such problems.
“In terms of this as an anniversary, I think it’s an interesting and important step, but I would point out that the charter remains inextricably linked to the patriation of the Constitution and the divisions around that matter, which as you know are still very real in some parts of the country,” Harper said at the time.
Trudeau also accused the NDP of being lukewarm about the charter because of its efforts to appeal to Quebecers.
“The NDP also find themselves to be deeply conflicted about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” he said, “largely because of a political calculation they’ve made pandering to … very vocal sovereigntist Quebecers who do not particularly appreciate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said the notion that his party is pandering to Quebecers is “completely false” and suggested the Liberals are trying to start fights and create divisions.
“We are the party that for the first time in a generation has won, for a federalist party, the majority of seats in Quebec. That’s something we should all be very happy about,” Mulcair said Wednesday.
Trudeau announced former interim Liberal leader Bob Rae will be serving as the party’s foreign affairs critic, while Marc Garneau will take over natural resources, and Joyce Murray will continue as critic for the Asia-Pacific region and small business.
Several Liberals also confirmed Trudeau’s new chief of staff will be Cyrus Reporter.
Reporter previously worked as chief of staff to Liberal cabinet minister Allan Rock before working as a lobbyist on issues such as copyright law, trade and investment, telecommunications, energy and infrastructure.
By now, the Tory attack ad has assumed the mythic status of a death star, a merciless drone, waiting to zap each unfortunate Liberal leader from the sky. In media lore, that is what happened to Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, good men destroyed by a barrage of Conservative advertising, and the Liberal Party with them.
Throughout the recent leadership campaign, the Tory death star lurked overhead, at least in the minds of its participants. Candidates were earnestly scolded not to say anything critical of one another, lest it appear in some future production from Conservative central command. Which of the candidates could withstand the expected onslaught became a primary concern, the raising of funds for which being the party’s highest priority.
We don’t actually know why so many people abandoned the Liberals over the past decade: I have my explanations and you have yours, but we’re all just theorizing. It’s possible Tory advertising contributed to the widespread public disregard into which both Dion and Ignatieff fell, but it’s also possible that it was their own weaknesses as leaders that did them in.
I’d give my left eyeball if the Tory ads were not based on polling and focus group research: They are more likely to have confirmed existing impressions than created a reality. What is more, they were correct impressions, on the whole. Whatever his other virtues, Dion was not, as it turned out, much of a leader. “Just visiting” might have been putting it too strong, but the notion that Ignatieff, or anyone, could successfully govern the country after nearly three decades abroad was always a hard sell.
It is possible, too, that both men were as much a symptom of the Liberals’ problems as their cause: These are the kinds of leader parties in as much trouble as the Liberals — divided, disconnected, panicking — tend to seize upon. No one really knows. People vote as they do for all sorts of reasons, which not even they can properly disentangle.
What we know is it suits the interests of a lot of different groups to sustain the myth of the all-destroying Tory attack machine. Liberals find it easier to blame Conservative brainwashing for their defeat — and by implication the gullible public — than to acknowledge their own failings, just as Tories find it more pleasing to credit victory to their strategic genius than Liberal disarray. Fundraisers for both find it useful to cite the ads as a means of pulling more cash out of their supporters, while for the media they serve as a simple explanation for events that would otherwise be tiresomely complex and uncertain.
But then, as we all know, attack ads “work.” Do they? The Liberals had their own attack ads. So did the NDP. Why didn’t they work? For that matter, why didn’t their opponents’ attack ads work when the Liberals were winning election after election? Every campaign features attack ads on all sides. Some presumably succeed, but a lot more of them fail. Nor is it a simple matter of who can buy the most ads: the history of politics is littered with examples to the contrary.
There is a case to be made against attack ads, but it isn’t that they inevitably tilt the field in favour of one party or another. It is rather that they pollute debate, and coarsen the culture. It is an argument about their morality, not their efficacy; the strategist’s common reply — “but they work” — only confirms how confused the two concepts have become.
It is true that politics inevitably involves some mutual criticism. To a point this is both necessary and beneficial. But tone matters, as does truth — truth, not merely in the sense of factual correctness, but fairness, proportion, context. What is objectionable about attack ads is not that they are “negative,” but that they are corrosive. Their intent is not merely to criticize, but to inflame. They’re not trying to provoke thought, but to shut it down.
As it does in other areas, politics inverts all the normal rules of debate. The speaker who is interested in persuading his audience will present his opponent’s arguments in the best possible light: the more convincing will he be when he knocks them down. But politics is not about persuading. It is about discrediting, kneecapping your opponent before he does the same to you. Attack ads are the purest form of this ethos.
What can we do about this? I can think of two things. One, we can stop subsidizing it. Modern election campaigns do not need to cost nearly as much as they do. The only reason each party spends as much as it does is because the others do, and most of what they spend it on hurts democracy — like attack ads. Take away the tax credits and the reimbursements, and we’d all be better off.
And two: Make the party leaders voice the ads. None of these ads appears without the leader’s authorization — yet their fingerprints are kept off them. They can take the high road, while their minions do their dirty work. If any of this filth came out of their own mouths, they’d have to be accountable for it. Their public standing would suffer. Indeed, they’d sound ridiculous.
So make them accountable. There’s no restriction of free speech involved: They could still say what they liked. They’d just have to own it. I have a hunch they’d clean up their act in a hurry.