Each party swallowed ‘advertising poison pill’
Limit of $53M can be spent by each campaign during the long election period
OTTAWA— The stakes are higher than ever in the advertising battle as the three main federal parties fight it out in an unusually close and unpredictable three-way election race.
And the ad barrage, already the most extensive ever witnessed in a national campaign, is only going to expand as voting day nears.
“All the parties have sort of swallowed the advertising poison pill, if you will, and they are committed to spending as much as they possibly can on it for this election,” said Jonathan Rose, a Queen’s University professor who specializes in political communication.
The Conservatives have been using paid ad spots to try to knock down Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau for more than two years. But, with the Liberals picking up ground in the polls in the weeks since the campaign began, the NDP is also stepping up its attacks against Trudeau. The NDP’s latest zingy spot, set to circus music, challenges Trudeau’s claim that he has been fighting the Harper agenda on the Keystone XL pipeline, tighter security legislation and other issues.
Each party can spend a lot more money on commercials this time around because of the lengthy, 78day campaign initiated by Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.
As the party that has raised the most money, the Conservatives gained a substantial edge in the ad war after Harper visited Rideau Hall on Aug. 2 to set the election in motion.
That’s because, under changes to election rules brought in by the Conservatives in 2014, spending limits are increased for each day the campaign goes past the usual five-week span.
This means each party can potentially spend up to approximately $53 million this time instead of the expected $28 million.
As the campaign evolves, the three main parties are fine-tuning their ad strategies to reflect the performance of the leaders and their parties. After what most observers saw as a rough start to the Conservative campaign, for instance, Harper’s team put out a promotional spot that seemed intended to emphasize his positives over his negatives.
The Liberals, who felt they failed to effectively counter the Conservatives’ attack ads against then-leader Ignatieff in his disastrous 2011 election campaign, have countered with a heavy buy of their own ads. Some poke fun at the Conservatives’ attacks on Trudeau while others are intended to drive home the Liberals’ central message — the need to improve the lot of middle-class Canadians.
But this advertising onslaught began long before the 2015 election officially started.
The Conservatives’ “He’s-just-not-ready” campaign against Trudeau has run relentlessly for months.
And, as the election battle looms, the New Democrats, who once swore off negative ads, unleashed one of the most blistering television spots aired this year. It was about alleged Conservative corruption and ended with former Tory MP Dean Del Mastro, described by the NDP as Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s ethics spokesperson, being led off to jail in handcuffs for violating election spending rules.
Another striking feature in the weeks before Harper announced the election was the blitz of Government of Canada promotions about enhanced support payments and tax breaks for families as well as other budget goodies brought in by the Conservatives.
Opposition MPs have long decried these government ads, which have eaten up more than $750 million in taxpayers’ money in recent years, as disguised Conservative propaganda. But Harper says it’s in keeping with Ottawa’s responsibility to inform the public of what the government is doing.
But once the campaign began for real, these ads came to an end. Election rules, for the most part, forbid federal government ads in the writ period.
By calling the election early, Harper also for the most part put an end to third-party ads as a factor in the campaign.
While the sky was the limit for spending on ads by these groups before the election officially began, each group is allowed to spend only about $400,000 on promotional spots during the actual campaign — not enough to make much difference.