Ottawa

Mike Allen Maverick Watch

Two Conservative MPs who won’t be sending out the Trudeau flyers

The Conservative MP for Tobique—Mactaquac won’t be sending mailouts to his constituents that mock Justin Trudeau.

“I’ve looked at some of the ads going back as far as 1993, some of the ads that have been used by all the parties during the last number of elections that I’ve run in and I find some of them, actually, odd, and a little bit childish,” Allen said. “But at the end of the day, I guess parties are using them because they’ve proven themselves to be effective and it’s a way to use their money to get their message out unfiltered.”

Allen notes negative ads have been effective against former Liberal leaders Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion, but he said it’s not his style. Allen said he will not send out any of the anti-Trudeau flyers to his constituents. “If I’m going to use something in my riding, I’m going to do a compare and contrast to the policy positions of the parties and the policy positions of the leader. I think in my riding I think people would say, ‘OK that is fair ball,'” he said.

Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber has also declined to send such mailouts, as he explained to reporters after QP last Thursday.

I won’t be participating in that program … generally speaking, my constituents are not all that thrilled by negative attacks … I don’t believe that my constituents are particularly thrilled by receiving that. They rather want to hear about issues. They’re not really interested in those types of ads, although other people have different opinions.

Update 1:25pm. Dan Albas won’t be sending around the mailouts either.

As a rule I typically avoid personal attacks or strongly themed politically partisan messaging. One observation that I have come to appreciate from our now retired MLA and former Speaker of the House Bill Barisoff, is that most citizens prefer aggressive partisan attacks are left out of the debate and discussion. Although I will not be using these particular ten percenters that have raised the ire of some, I do support the right of Members of Parliament from all sides of the House to communicate on issues they believe are important without restrictions on the content.

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