Striking while the iron is hot!

Well they may not have a leader yet, indeed it's still up in the air who will take the newly reconfigured Conservative Party into battle, but they sure know who they're against. Launching the election campaign before it's even called, the Conservatives have put the finishing touches on some radio ad's, that take the advertising scandal to the airwaves of Canada.

The radio commercials, five of them in total, will hit the air next week. They touch on a number of themes, one of them Paul Martin's Canada Steamship Lines tax avoidance issues, the rest deal with the current sponsorship scandal.

One commercial features the voice of a Caribbean sounding actor advising that "our Prime Minister has figured it all out a long time ago " a suggestion as to why CSL registered in the Caribbean at a tax rate of 2% as opposed to Canada at 41%. A woman then adds a line at the end about how if Paul Martin is leading by example, what is he tellilng us? Ouch, now that's something you might expect the folks at Smilin' Jack Layton productions to come up with, but alas, asleep at the mic, the NDP find themselves trumped on their own pet issue.

The Tories may not have a leader yet, but they certainly have a team on top of the undeclared campaign. It will be interesting to see how the pre-occupied Liberals bounce back to challenge the attack ads (or factually correct as the Tories like to refer to them as) and craft their message. That is as soon as they figure out what that message is going to be.