Conservatives launch Youtube attack ad aimed at Michael Ignatieff.
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Justin Trudeau and his leadership team are urging Liberals to donate $5 immediately to fight off anticipated Conservative attack ads, suggesting in a fundraising letter that the Tories can't wait to tear down the front-running candidate.
"We knew this would happen," they say in the aggressively worded letter, emailed to supporters earlier this week by Mr. Trudeau's top strategists, Gerald Butts and Katie Telford. "Each of you owns a piece of this campaign. We can't let them tear it down."
It notes recent media reports that say the Tories are ready to go with ads that will try to define Mr. Trudeau as a leader not ready to govern.
"But let's be clear: We won't take this lying down. We will fight back," say the two strategists in their note. "Every dollar you donate now will be used to fight back against those negative attack ads," says the fundraising letter.
In using this tactic, the Liberals are stealing a page right out of the Tory strategy book. The Harper Conservatives are successful fundraisers, using hot button issues, such as gun control or the CBC, to appeal to their base to send in small amounts of money between elections.
In the past, for example, the Conservatives have attacked the publicly funded broadcaster, arguing that it has a left-wing bias and is unfair to the right.
In 2011, the Tories appealed to their supporters to help them assign priorities and asked whether they felt they were getting "good value" or "bad value" for the more than $1-billion-a-year organization.
Several years before that, the Tories raised money on the backs of accusations that an Ottawa pollster, who appeared regularly as a commentator on the CBC, was also giving strategic advice to the Liberals.
Now, Mr. Trudeau is adopting similar tactics and using the spectre of negative ads – deployed effectively against previous Liberal leaders Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion – to raise some quick bucks as the campaign comes to a close.
Mr. Trudeau is a stellar fundraiser, telling his caucus colleagues at a recent closed-door meeting on Parliament Hill that he will be able to donate at least $750,000 to the Liberal war chest once the campaign is over on April 14. There is speculation that number will be as high as $1-million.
The other five candidates, who were also at the caucus, were asked if they would be out of debt after the leadership. All they would say is they hoped to break even or be able to pay off their debts. The debt issue caused embarrassment for the party after the 2006 leadership when many candidates, including the winner, Stephane Dion, struggled for years to retire their debt.
A senior Trudeau organizer, meanwhile, acknowledges the fundraising tactic, saying that Trudeau strategists are trying to raise expectations that the "big, bad [Tory] machine" is coming after them and may be "overstating" what is coming in terms of attack ads as a way to raise money now for the leadership and party.
Amassing a war chest between elections is an important way of continuing to connect with your base supporters and having money in the bank to fend off attacks from your opponents.
Mr. Trudeau's fundraising prowess is in contrast to the previous leaders who were not nearly as effective. The Tories have routinely outstripped the Liberals in fundraising.
According to Elections Canada, the Conservatives raised $17-million last year compared to $9-million for the Liberals. In 2011 – the most recent election year – the Tories raised nearly $23-million while the Liberals managed a total of $10.3-million.
The letter comes as the six Liberal leadership contenders prepare to give their final speeches of the campaign to supporters at a so-called "national showcase" in Toronto Saturday. Former prime minister Paul Martin will also speak; there is also a tribute to interim leader Bob Rae.
A week of voting follows the speeches and the winner is to be revealed in Ottawa on April 14.
Jane Taber, The Globe's Atlantic Bureau Chief, has covered federal politics for more than 25 years.