Conservatives launch massive ad campaign amid surge in polls

The Conservative Party of  Canada is launching a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that depicts its leader, Pierre Poilievre, as a family man who wants to fix the country — all while his party is soaring in the polls and his main rival is going through a public split with his spouse.

“This is not a branding campaign. This is an amplification of who Pierre is and always has been,” said Regan Watts, a former senior adviser to the Conservative foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon.

“He’s warm, he’s kind, he’s empathetic and he listens… It’s important for people to delineate between Parliament Hill and the rest of the country, engaging with Canadians one-on-one. “

Two of the three ads focus on showing a more human side of Poilievre, whose aggressive, bulldog style has seen him spar with journalists and politicians alike, prompting Maclean’s magazine to ask “Why is Pierre Poilievre so angry?”

A senior Conservative source confirmed to CBC News that the party will spend more than $3 million over three months to push three bilingual ads in every province and territory.

The ads will air on TV, radio, digital platforms and print media.

Polling analyst Éric Grenier, the author of TheWrit.ca, says the timing of the campaign makes sense.

“Usually when there is a new leader in place and Canadians don’t know a lot about them, there is an attempt to try to make them seem more like a likable person,” he said.

The first ad features voice-over from Poilievre’s wife, Anaida, a Montreal-raised Venezuelan immigrant who has been described in a Quebec newspaper as Poilievre’s “hidden ace” in Quebec.

“Who is Pierre Poilievre?” she narrates, before showing the Conservative leader at different stages of his life, including playing hockey while growing up in Calgary, and playing with his own children.

“And I know him as a guy who loves me for who I am,” she says in the ad. “A Canadian, who came to call Canada home, and his wife.” 

It was released less than a week after Justin Trudeau’s high-profile separation from his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau.

The second ad shows Poilievre sitting with his son, doing a puzzle.

“Everything feels broken in Canada. Unaffordable, unsafe, divided. But we can put the pieces back together,” he says in voice-over.

The third ad is an attack on the carbon tax, which Poilievre says he would undo if elected.

A surge in polls 

This ad campaign comes while the party surges in the polls. 

“All the national polling that we’ve seen over the last few months have given the Conservatives a wide lead, sometimes as wide as 10 points, and that has increased over the last few months,” Grenier said.

“The question is whether it’s going to hold into the fall.”

It also comes weeks after he ditched his tie and glasses for a more casual look, which some strategists say could signal an effort to present a more laid-back, likable version of himself.

These ads could be an appeal to women — a key demographic Conservatives are trying to court, says Grenier. 

“The Conservatives in general poll less well among women than they do among men… For Pierre Poilievre, we’ve seen the same kinds of things. Negatives tend to be a lot higher among women than among men,” he said. 

“This is a way to make him seem less abrasive, less partisan.”

Canada’s Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez was asked about the new ad campaign and said he doesn’t believe the ads will sway people, particularly in his home province of Quebec.

“You can change the packaging if you want, you can change the packaging, but not the contents,” he said. “The content is not something that Quebecers want.”

‘Money to burn’

Though the $3-million price tag might seem expensive, the Conservative Party of Canada is out-fundraising its rivals — by a lot.

From April to June alone, the Tories raised nearly $8 million in donations, a slight decrease from the $8.3 million the party raised during the first three months of the year. 

That’s more than double what the Liberals raised in the same window of time. 

“They have lots of money to burn,” said Grenier. “The gap in fundraising over the last six months between the two parties is the biggest it’s ever been … which gives them an advantage between elections that the Liberals and New Democrats simply don’t have.”

The Conservative faithful will be gathering in Quebec City from Sept. 7 -9 for their annual convention. The website notes it’s the first in-person convention since 2018.