Liberals spoof Conservative attack ad

Members of the Liberal Party have fired back at the federal Conservatives with humour, spoofing a recent Justin Trudeau attack ad.

Posted on former Liberal MP Omar Alghabra’s YouTube page, the seemingly homemade video shows a handful of actors in a boardroom conducting a performance review of an employee — one Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The ad it’s spoofing had the same sort of idea — but instead had actors sharing their thoughts about Justin Trudeau while screening the Liberal leader for a job - to be the next prime minister.

The Conservative ad played up familiar attack lines against Trudeau: that he, apparently, believes budgets balance themselves, his lack of experience and that he’s got nice hair but that’s about it.

In the LIberal ad actors pull out Stephen Harper’s resume and go through his pitch in a re-application for the job of prime minister.

“It says here that he’s the best at balancing budgets,” one actor says.

“But didn’t he run deficits seven years in a row?” another asks.

Oh, and there are a few things missing from the prime minister’s list of accomplishments, they suggest. Mainly, his experience in advertising (and self promotion, using taxpayer’s dollars to do so). All of the Senate appointments he’s made while in government aren’t listed in his re-application either.

“I wonder why,” says one of the actors.

The Liberal video is a spoof on the Conservative ad released late last month, which was actually a reboot of a Manitoba NDP ad from 2011 that picked apart the job experience of PC leader Hugh McFadyen.

The Conservative ad is a near shot-for-shot reproduction of the NDP original, right down to the the punchline at the end of the video. The NDP ad ends with a quip about McFadyen’s “nice suit,” and the Conservative’ version follows suitwith a last line about Trudeau’s “nice hair.”

All three main parties — Conservative, Liberal and NDP — have begun to release campaign-like advertisements in the lead up to the next federal election, expected Oct. 19 of this year.