New NDP ads featuring Jack Layton.
Jack Layton says Ottawa is broken and only the NDP can fix it. Stephen Harper's Ottawa, meanwhile, is full of gently waving Canadian flags, happy families and completed infrastructure projects - so vote Conservative.
One day, two sets of political ads - and the contrast couldn't be more stark.
First, the NDP on Monday released three new advertisements characterizing the Harper Conservatives as untrustworthy and lacking leadership. In two of the ads, Jack Layton talks about how Canadians' trust was betrayed by every party - except the NDP - over the harmonized sales tax. In the other ad, Mr. Layton pushes for help for seniors and health care.
It was an unusual step for the New Democrats to spend prewrit dollars on election-style ads.
Some pundits say this means we're already in a pre-election campaign, and that the defeat of the March budget will simply confirm this.
But Liberals suggest the NDP ads could be read another way - "rationalizing a cave-in on the budget" - as they talk about ways to make Ottawa work. A simple budget measure addressing seniors' issues, as Jim Flaherty is hinting he may include, could mean the difference between having an election, or not.
It appears the Liberals and Bloc will not support the budget, but it is still unclear what the NDP will do.
The Harper Conservatives followed with two new ads of their own - one a "feel-good" piece about the possibilities for Canada under the Tories, the other an attack on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and his demands to reverse corporate tax cuts.
But the Conservatives took heat over footage used in the feel-good ad. The Liberals accused them of using video of military jets shot with taxpayers' money for their partisan purposes.
"… The idea that you'd piggyback your partisan ads onto that effectively means that the taxpayers are providing an enormously huge subsidy to the Conservative Party for their election ads," Toronto Liberal MP Bob Rae said. "It's offensive."
Conservative party spokesman Fred DeLorey said that "the clip in question has been publicly released" and is still publicly available.
So, is an election imminent? Inside the Prime Minister's Office, they've put the odds at 70-30 in favour of a campaign, even though they say they do not want one.
The Tory ad: Approachable me
Stephen Harper plays the central character in his feel-good ad; he even narrates it. In it, Mr. Harper is presented as an approachable family man.
It is similar to a 2004 Tory campaign ad, also narrated by Mr. Harper, and featuring his family. Music plays softly in the background.
In the new one, Mr. Harper talks as Prime Minister about how Canadians have weathered the recession well, noting much work is still to be done. It is hopeful, promising better days ahead.
The second ad says nothing about the Prime Minister. Instead, it goes right for Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's jugular over his demands for the reversal of the corporate tax cuts.
The NDP ad: Danish casual
In the NDP ads, Jack Layton is casually dressed - his tie loosely knotted and his sleeves rolled up - as he criticizes the Harper government for not doing more for seniors, for selling out Canadians on the HST and for playing partisan games.
He says lobbyists and senators are getting all the breaks, and that he wants to bring back "leadership" to political Ottawa.
But the NDP was red-faced after a Liberal blogger noted that a family portrayed in the ad is from stock footage from Denmark.
"We make our best effort to use Canadian images," the NDP's Drew Anderson said. "Because the bank of Canadian stock images is limited, like all parties, the images we need are sometimes not available from Canada."
He said all parties do it - and in a dig at the Liberals, he noted that their "Rural Canada" plan has images of farmers from Utah.