Liberal Party preparing to launch ad campaign to take on high-flying Poilievre
Data shows the Conservatives have outspent the Liberals on ads by a lot
The Liberal Party is preparing to launch an ad campaign to fight back against the high-flying Conservatives and close a polling gap that suggests it's on track to lose big if an election is called soon.
Liberal MPs heard today from Andrew Bevan, the party's recently appointed campaign director, about what the party has planned to try and claw its way back into contention.
Bevan presented some planned Liberal advertising spots to MPs and explained the party's vision for the next election campaign, whenever it comes, Liberal sources told CBC News.
Bevan had planned to make a presentation to caucus about the ads and pre-election planning last week. That presentation was derailed by disaffected Liberal MPs who took the mic to ask Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign.
The issue of Trudeau's leadership did not come up again today, sources said, because Bevan's presentation took up the bulk of the two-hour meeting. But some MPs are still demanding a secret ballot vote in caucus on Trudeau's future at the top.
Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, who has been a critic of the party's virtually non-existent ad spending in recent months, said Bevan presented the beginnings of a plan to take the Liberal message to the airwaves and online platforms. Those ads should be coming "soon," he said.
"I think we sort of brought a knife to a gunfight so far on how we're approaching advertising and how we're approaching the campaign in general," Erskine-Smith told reporters after the meeting with Bevan.
"I think we've got to step up our game and today was an important meeting in doing just that."
Erskine-Smith said Bevan told MPs that the party's fundraising numbers are "quite strong."
That money "needs to be put in play in an effective way. When you look at the outsized spending on advertising between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party — we've got to close that gap," he said.
"Innovative advertising campaigns in the lead-up to and during the 2015, 2019 and 2021 elections were an important part of how the Liberal Party of Canada successfully connected with more Canadians than ever before about Justin Trudeau's positive plan to invest in the middle class — and the same will be the case for the next election, whenever it may arise," a Liberal Party spokesperson told CBC News.
Elections Canada data reveals just how far behind the Liberals are in the ad war.
In 2023, the Liberals spent just $381,346 on advertising, a figure easily dwarfed by the $8,542,867 the Conservatives spent that year, much of it on TV ads.
The figures for 2024 are likely to show much the same, as the Liberals have essentially ceded the TV ad space to their main opponent.
The Conservatives have stepped into the void, blanketing traditional and social media with advertising.
One of the party's latest ads, titled "Mountain," has been on heavy circulation during major TV events like postseason baseball. It features a soft-spoken Poilievre saying Canada isn't recognizable after nine years of Liberal government.
In the one-minute ad, Poilievre blasts the country's higher debt load and stressed immigration system and says Trudeau has presided over a government consumed by "woke obsessions dishonouring our history, destroying our education, degrading our military and dividing our people."
Another 30-second Conservative ad spot, titled "What and why," criticizes the Liberals for higher costs and crime.
Those ads follow a TV campaign launched in the summer of 2023, which was designed to introduce Poilievre — who had been elected leader less than a year earlier — to Canadians by highlighting his young family.
While it's difficult to say if these ad campaigns have given Poilievre a boost, last summer's TV ad did coincide with a notable uptick in public support for the Conservatives.
The party started posting higher numbers in opinion surveys in late July, August and September of last year, before moving higher still in 2024.
Political advertising is ubiquitous in the U.S., especially in the swing states that will decide the presidential election. There's a reason for that.
A 2021 study of nearly twenty years worth of television advertising in U.S. elections found "the larger a candidate's advantage in advertising compared to their opponent, the larger their share of the vote."
"Despite increasing partisanship in the electorate, there are still persuadable voters that respond to television advertising," said the political science researchers behind the study, published in the American Political Science Review.
"The persuasive impact of television advertising appears to be larger than the impact of other electioneering, such as canvassing or mail, whose impact is quite small, even zero."
In an interview with Trudeau on his Uncommons podcast last month, Erskine-Smith confronted the prime minister about the advertising issue.
"We've given [Poilievre] a little more of a free pass since he was elected leader than I maybe would have if I could go back and do it again," Erskine-Smith said to Trudeau.
Trudeau said he was initially reluctant to attack Poilievre because he was focused on "governing through a really tough time," as Canada grappled with the tail end of the pandemic and high inflation.
"For me to come out and pick a fight with Poilievre right out of the gate and I'm suddenly so worried about him that I'm going to put up millions of dollars for an ad buy to try and tell Canadians how scary or reckless or dangerous he is — it could've worked, it might've worked ... but there was something that didn't feel true to me," Trudeau said.
In an interview with Inside the Village, an Ontario news podcast, that aired over the weekend, Trudeau said the party is readying some sort of response to Poilievre.
"There's a huge level of frustration that is pointed at me. A lot of it is directed at me through a very clever use of social media and attack ads that we haven't yet responded to," he said.
Asked about his poor standing in the polls, Trudeau said, "Do we need to do something radical to change things? My perspective is yes, we need to make significant changes in how we engage with Canadians over the coming months."
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Erskine-Smith said the Liberal Party has workshopped ads that feature Trudeau and those that don't.
He said, from his perspective, the ads should "articulate not only a message of what we've done but what comes next."
Erskine-Smith said too few Canadians know what the Liberal government has accomplished over the last nine years. He pointed to the Canada child benefit the government says has lifted some 400,000 kids out of poverty and the national daycare program that has lowered child-minding fees for many parents.
But Erskine-Smith also said any ad campaign should also draw a contrast between the Liberals and the Conservatives, some of whom he accused of peddling "absurd conspiracy-addled nonsense."
Some MPs left the meeting feeling buoyed by Bevan's presentation.
MP Marcus Powlowski said "there is enthusiasm" in caucus even though the party has been beset by internal divisions over Trudeau's future.
"It may be hard to believe, being 20 per cent behind in the polls, but ... better times are on their way. And I think that isn't going to happen overnight but I think it's going to gradually snowball, hopefully," Powlowski said.
MP Ken Hardie said the party's "framework and strategy looks extremely good. I wouldn't be any happier if I had written it myself."
"You will have interesting things to report on in the weeks to come," he told reporters. "Conservatives should be nervous."
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With files from the CBC's Ashley Burke, David Cochrane
