Hold the hate: Governance straight up, please

Conservative ad campaign has no place outside of election

Miguel McKenna

I was trying to hold off on slamming federal politics for another week or two, but this Conservative smear campaign against Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has become too ridiculous to ignore.

The main problem with the federal government’s strategy is that there isn’t even an election to be advertising about. Sure, there’s a lot of election talk right now, but lately there’s talk of an election every year. Nevertheless, Canadians now have to deal with the second round of smear ads targeted at Ignatieff, much the same as we had to endure the anti-Stéphane Dion round well before the fall election of 2008.

No matter how inflammatory their propaganda machine is, the fact is this is the second time the Conservative government has spread filth around about a public figure without the existence of an election to justify the process.

At least if we were to get an election out of the deal, Canadians would have the opportunity and power to make our own opinions about a party’s campaign tactics known and taken seriously. For the time being, Canadians are being bombarded with – in some cases – two consecutive 30-second television commercials three times during a one-hour program (I counted). And all this when there is no election to legitimize such media saturation.

The real fear caused by these de facto campaign tactics is that they might one day lead to the precedent of running political smear-ad campaigns all year long.

There may be those who say that the Conservative strategy is solely a solid political strategy, nothing more. But when you can’t turn on your television without being bombarded by campaign slogans, it starts to resemble more and more the Two-Minute Hate from George Orwell’s 1984 – that state-administered method of brainwashing the population.

Moreover, the taxpayers have to pay for this crap every time an overly eager political strategist or MP wishes to drum up the word “election.” It has been said before that when a politician decides to refrain from engaging in a smear-ad campaign – and instead supplying voters with poltically useful information – they are merely posturing.

But it stands to reason that since they are paying for it, a lot of taxpayers appreciate ads that give them an idea of what a politician is about, rather than one minute of slander.

To ensure Canada doesn’t descend any further into an Orwellian advertisement nightmare, it should be legislated that political parties be barred from airing any campaign material off the proverbial campaign trail.

If campaign ads are to be financed by the public, they should only be aired within limits. And this limit should be during election time only.

Alexander Kavanagh is a University of Winnipeg student.

Published in Volume 64, Number 5 of The Uniter (October 1, 2009)

Related Reads