Liberal and Tory campaigns involved in deceptive politics?

Two incidents last week in the Ontario election campaign highlight how spinsters have come to blur the line between real and make believe.

On Friday, Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty faced accusations a campaign stop at a seemingly active and successful solar panel plant earlier in the week was staged.

The Liberal leader used Eclipsall Energy Corp. in Toronto as a backdrop to tout the success of his green energy plan. But when an intrepid reporter visited the plant a couple of days later, she found a very different scene.

"The reception desk was empty, the cafeteria was closed and only a handful of employees milling around inside the sparsely furnished building," noted a National Post report.

McGuinty's apparent folly came one day after Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak was accused of using the wrong parents for a picture while promoting his party's plan to make public an online sex offender registry.

Hudak posed for photos with a group of people he described as local parents "shocked" that convicted sex offender Sarah Dahle had been allowed to move into an assisted-living home next door to an elementary school despite a police warning she was at a high-risk to reoffend.

He cheered the parents for "standing up and doing what is right," noting Dahle has since been moved to the London, Ont., area.

But a report said people standing with Hudak during the press conference were not members of the parenting group that was part of the protest - those parents refused to pose with Hudak.

Both leaders made attempts to defend themselves: Mcguinty said the fact the solar plant was idle was good because it meant they had run out of inventory, while Hudak said "the whole community is involved when a child predator moves into a neighbourhood."

The two sloppily staged events are examples of what election campaigns can become.

In a world where consumers of media face information overload, campaigns now focus on poignant photo-ops and to-the-point sound bites. And, as we saw last week, if they have to be staged, then so be it.

Campaigns are now more like 'show biz' than ever before.

(Photos: CP and CBC)