Thanks for the Tip Ian

Ian Brodie, Harper's former chief of staff, has kindly offered the Liberal Party some advertising strategy.

He claims that the Liberal's fiscal record just isn't resonating with Canadians. He bases this on market research done for the Conservative party, which immediately makes one a tad skeptical. While I'm sure they hire the best and the brightest to provide this data, their 'tin ear' would suggest that they either interpret it to suit themselves or they ignore it all together.

Regardless, if that is what the data is telling them, then it's also telling the Liberal party to amp up advertising in that area. Granted, before recent events it would have been a more difficult task. Simply saying that the Conservatives were mismanaging the finances without tangible evidence, is a tough case to make. Telling Canadians that the revenues were declining and expenses were increasing, due to political pandering and flawed ideology, well, that just doesn't have a nice ring to it in an advertising campaign.

Now though, we have a poster boy in Jim Flaherty. We have his provincial history now amplified on the federal scene and the contrast between the Conservative and Liberal records is stark. Brodie even admits that what Canadians believe isn't true:

"Even despite Martin's enviable track record as finance minister, Chrétien's enviable track record as prime minister, there you go," Brodie said, arguing that parties often end up with an image they don't want or even help to create.

"We resolved that the term `competitiveness,' the term `productivity' and the term `innovation' was never going to appear in anything we said or did in the 2005-2006 election campaign."

Oh those cards! They certainly do enjoy pulling one over on us don't they?

I'll leave it to the pro's as to how to get the message out, but in the meantime. I want to thank Mr. Brodie for his unsolicited advice.