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Canada's ethanol industry has launched a new advertising campaign extolling the vision and leadership of the Conservative government, which has showered the sector with subsidies in a strategy to boost the rural economy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The campaign comes as new research prepared for an Independent senator found that 67 per cent of planned biofuel projects that could qualify for federal grants are in ridings held by Conservative MPs.

Green Party spokesman John Bennett said the publicity campaign and the information on plant location underscore the close political ties between the ethanol industry and the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"This is gross political ass-kissing," Mr. Bennett, a long-time Ottawa-based environmental lobbyist, said of the ad.

It is "absolutely political payback [for the government's support of the industry] and completely inappropriate - especially when there is an election coming," he said.

The Canadian Renewable Fuels Association denies there is any partisan slant to the ads, which promote an Edmonton project to convert municipal waste to ethanol supported by the city and the provincial government. The first spot in a planned series of advertisements will run in farm publications and regional media across the country for the next several weeks.

"Thanks to the vision and leadership of our federal and provincial governments, Canada is now developing newer and even better renewable fuels," it proclaims, although the Edmonton project has no direct federal support.

The association - whose former president, Kory Teneycke, is now Mr. Harper's director of communications - sparked controversy in the past with its aggressive, arguably political advertising. One spot that ran in 2007 specifically thanked Mr. Harper for keeping his promise to support biofuels, although Mr. Teneycke defended the ads at the time, saying the association had also given credit to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Association president Gord Quaiattini said the ad is meant to highlight the industry's move beyond grain-based feedstock to the new cellulosic sources such as municipal and agricultural waste. And to give credit to provincial and federal governments of all partisan stripes, including the current Harper government and its Liberal predecessor.

"It's just part of an overall outreach and communication effort that we're doing ... to let Canadians know the investments and the efforts the industry is making," he said.

Mr. Quaiattini said the ethanol industry is merely answering its critics, who have hammered it over the past year as food prices climbed as a result of greater biofuel demand and higher energy costs. He denied there is any special relationship with the Harper government.

"We are acknowledging all government leadership - and not in a partisan way at all - but all governments of all political stripes that have come forward and have been partners with us," said Mr. Quaiattini, who spent last week hobnobbing with Liberal MPs outside their caucus meeting in Winnipeg.

As for the concentration of biofuel announcements in Conservative ridings, Mr. Quaiattini said plants are close to the farm-based source of feedstock - primarily corn in Eastern Canada and wheat in the West.

But he insisted companies are not driven by political considerations.

"I can absolutely and unequivocally tell you that investment decisions by individual companies have nothing to do with the partisan persuasion of the riding," he said. "Sure, we're building in rural Canada ... and right now the Conservatives do benefit from having a significant rural caucus."

Researcher Barbara Robson, who works for Independent Senator Mira Spivak, cross-referenced the announced biofuel plants that could qualify for federal aid with the local MPs' party affiliation. Two-thirds would be in Tory ridings, 14 per cent in constituencies held by the Bloc Québécois and 9 per cent in Liberal ridings.

Ms. Robson acknowledged that the Conservatives tend to dominate rural ridings, where companies locate biofuel plants, but added that the results may shed light on the government's unwavering commitment to ethanol subsidies at a time when many experts were questioning the environmental benefits of such programs.

The Green Party's Mr. Bennett said both the Liberals and Conservatives have promoted ethanol as part of a political strategy to woo rural voters. He noted that the Harper government jettisoned virtually all of the Liberal climate-change programs when it took office in 2006 - but kept ethanol subsidies. The Conservatives also recently passed legislation to establish minimum standards for biofuel use in Canadian transportation fuel.

Saskatchewan MP David Anderson, parliamentary secretary for the Minister of Natural Resources, said the government supports the ethanol industry as a way of developing alternatives to petroleum, and as a rural development initiative.

Mr. Anderson - whose Cypress Hills-Grasslands riding has a proposed farmer-owned ethanol plant - said it is natural that the projects are in rural ridings, but that they are going up in the West, in Ontario and in Quebec, regardless of the party of the local MP.

"We want to develop this as another alternative we have to controlling our energy costs, and I think it's a good one. And the rural areas often have an opportunity to benefit from that."