Source: Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — The Conservative party was unable to get television commercials aimed at Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation because the attack ads violated the network's long-standing ban on political advertising.

The Tories approached CBC officials before the launch of the "Michael Ignatieff: just visiting" campaign and were told that an internal policy prevented the network from accepting political ads outside of times of elections.

As are other broadcasters, CBC is required to provide a share of its airtime to political parties during the writ period, but can set its own rules outside it.

"We'll only accept political advertising like that when there is an election campaign on," CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said. "We have generally pretty strict guidelines."

The policy has been in place for many years and was reviewed a few years ago, Keay said.

It is unusual for political parties to advertise before or after an election, but the Tories, flush with cash, effectively used a series of attack ads against former Liberal leader Stephane Dion before the 2008 campaign officially began.

The "just visiting" ads running on other networks attempt to portray Ignatieff as an opportunist who spent most of his adult life outside of Canada. The spots accuse him of having no plan for the economy and highlight a 1994 television interview in which he referred to the United States as "your country just as much as it is mine."

One Conservative source, speaking on background, said the party thought it was odd CBC would turn down its advertising dollars at a time when the network was struggling under financial pressures. CBC has had to reduce staff and programming as advertising revenues have plunged.

No other network refused to carry the Ignatieff ads, the source said. The TV spots have received heavy airplay in recent weeks, and the cost of the campaign is estimated in the millions of dollars.

Parties are free to spend as much as they like on advertising outside of election periods, but a Liberal senator last week introduced a bill to curtail pre-writ ads. Senator Dennis Dawson's bill would amend the Elections Act to require parties to count all advertising toward their cap on election spending.

Canadian small-c conservatives have long fumed over what they consider to be unfair restrictions on political advertising. Stephen Harper, when he led the National Citizens Coalition, went to court to challenge rules limiting third-party political advertising in a case indexed as "Harper versus Canada."

More recently, the Tories have battled with Elections Canada in court over the agency's refusal to reimburse candidates for the costs of radio and television ads from the 2006 federal election.

© Ottawa Citizen