Stephen Taylor

New PC Ontario ads

These ads were released today by the John Tory-led PC Party of Ontario. They are pure endorsement-style advertising where three spots feature three Ontarians singing the praises of John Tory as “a leader”.

First, the good…

The Ontario PC Party is cleverly pairing the “leader” theme with the federal Conservative “Dion is not a leader” advertising. In effect, they are piggy-backing on the success of the ads and the mindset already created for voters by the Dion ads. So, Dion isn’t a leader? John Tory comes in and fills the other half of the statement: “I’m a leader”.

The bad…

The ads are awfully boring and don’t hold the attention of the viewer. There is no hook. The ads are quiet and pensive in their delivery, however, it can come across as dead air. If these ads are to provoke feelings of trust and hope in a leader figure, some music behind the testimonials with some more black and white slides of Tory would help. Give me some french horns!

Here are the ads:

Bahadur

Kathy

Simone

What do you think of the ads? Will they be effective? Do they reach out to the appropriate audience?

Dion’s blackberry downloads

A nice plug for Blogging Tories from Tim Powers on Mike Duffy Live.

Tim’s talking about the Dion ringtones / Blackberry wallpaper / Desktop wallpaper that is available for download from Blogging Tories.

Instructions, go to www.bloggingtories.ca on your mobile/blackberry and click on the Dion blackberry link.

Download the MP3 and JPG files. Set the MP3s to your ringtones and throw up a good “Dion is not a leader” pic as your Blackberry background image.

Then, when you’re in committee, or at a meeting, you will get a call and your blackberry will exclaim “Stephane Dion is not a leader”.

When you’re having a steak at Hy’s, you’ll get an email and your Blackberry will play Dion’s “Do you think it’s easy to make priorities” quote.

Get it done…

(there’s some great stuff for desktop users as well… click here browse the content. Be sure to set your MSN messenger profile picture and download the desktop wallpaper!)

That time when I met Elizabeth May

This week I also met Elizabeth May. The leader of the Green Party was in high spirits that day despite Garth Turner’s betrayal of everyone (conservatives, constituents, May and the Greens) just a few hours earlier. Turner campaigned for May in London North Centre, teased us all by telling us that he was considering “going Green”. He even turned his back on his constituents, which during a townhall in Halton, about 1 in 4 told Garth to go Green while not one told him to go Liberal.

Anyway, this post is about Elizabeth May. Unfortunately, we didn’t have too much time to chat.

It would be interesting to see May in a debate with party leaders during an election. However, should a party have at least one elected (or sitting) MP in order to have such a platform? What is your opinion?

If I remember correctly, Reform was allowed to debate only after Deb Grey won a by-election. If Turner had gone Green, he would have been a sitting, yet unelected Green MP. What should the threshold be? Also, consider that the laws governing the identity of a “party” have changed since 1989 when Grey became the first Reform MP.

You’ll find Liberals advocating that May should be allowed to debate because the Green vote is thought to cut into NDP support. NDPers thus are less likely to support the idea. Since Conservatives are depending on the NDP to split the left, they’re more likely to support the NDP position.

What may be certain though, is that we ought to have clear guidelines for Green Party inclusion in a televised debate.

BUT… this brings us to another topic to consider. The national networks are largely in charge of debate format and the participants invited and their decisions are largely subjective and outside of parliamentary review and jurisdiction. If a debate were held in a different forum (and medium — say… online) who would accept an invitation to debate and on what terms? If Harper, Dion, Duceppe and May accepted an invitation, would Layton turn down the opportunity to debate?

Is there such thing as an “official” debate?