The Conservatives unveiled a new attack ad in Scarborough today for the upcoming June 30 by-election, but this one wasn’t a video. The leaflet they released included pictures of children smoking juxtaposed with their interpretation of Trudeau’s marijuana policy, and a quote by former Scarborough-Agincourt MP Jim Karygiannis on why he quit.
He did say that
CP
The Conservatives hope to use Karygiannis’ statement, combined with a photos of teens smoking pot to convince blue Liberals that Trudeau represents a fundamental departure from the core values that Scarboroughians hold dear: their children not smoking marijuana.
The problem is, that photo of a kid smoking a joint exists despite the Conservative marijuana laws, because black markets kind of exist in abundance in Canada, especially low-scale marijuana dealers in high schools. We wouldn’t know anything about that, but rumour has it that kids in school buy pot these days. Ignoring this entirely, the Liberal Party has seized upon the Karygiannis quote as being taken out of context. Karygiannis has said that the ad made him “want to go vote for [the Liberal Candidate] twice because of what they did,” and that the quote was in reference to the Liberals refusing to adopt hardball tactics in election campaigns, and taking ethnic community votes for granted.
Well Jim, if you want hardball tactics and aggressive campaigning in ethnic neighbourhoods (namely Scarborough), look no further than the federal Conservatives. They appear to have that covered.