Battle of the third parties: ‘Working Canadians’ vs ‘Working Families’
While Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives fret about what Working Families Coalition will do once the advertising blackout lifts on Wednesday, and try to condition the public for the union group’s efforts, an organization more to their liking has already been running an ad of its own.
As reported back in January, “Working Canadians” is an obvious response to Working Families, led by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’s Catherine Swift. Over the past couple of weeks, it’s been airing this spot on AM 640, a talk-radio station in Toronto:
The organization seems to have been able to get around the blackout for the first two weeks of the writ period by not registering as a third party, on the basis that it’s not commenting on any political parties or candidates. And it appears the ad will continue running on that station, at least, for a while longer.
It doesn’t look, though, like Working Canadians will have significantly broader reach during this campaign. “We do plan to be doing some more advertising over the next few weeks,” Ms. Swift said when reached by e-mail. “Of course we have nowhere near the resources the unions have so we have to be very low-cost and strategic.”
With Mr. Hudak running on significantly smaller government and a big corporate tax cut, it’s somewhat surprising that business interests haven’t come forward with enough money to match the unions fighting to keep him from office. But Ms. Swift’s efforts are more than we’ve seen from that side in the past couple of campaigns, and the Tories are probably grateful for any indirect help they can get.