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Conservatives Stoke Fears of Weed and Brothels to Woo Immigrant Voters in Canada

With days to go until voting day on Oct. 19, the Conservatives have taken their aggressive campaign to court the ethnic vote a step further with ads that target their main opponents in Punjabi and Chinese newspapers.
Laureen Harper dances to Bollywood style music in Brampton/CP

The ad in a Chinese-language newspaper in Vancouver is hard to ignore: it shows a man smoking a joint, a person injecting drugs into their arm, and a woman in a midriff-bearing top. The images are below a familiar face, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, and text that reads: "Does Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party share the same values as you?"

With days to go until voting day on Oct. 19, the Conservatives have taken their aggressive campaign to court the ethnic vote a step further, placing ads like these, which target their main opponent, in Chinese and Punjabi newspapers.

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Translated, the ads say the Liberals would legalize marijuana and allow children easier access, put up illegal drug injection sites in neighborhoods, as well as legalize prostitution and open brothels in communities.

"I'm shocked someone would just use such graphic depictions to connect to some misleading information," Harjit Sajjan, the Liberal candidate in Vancouver-South, told VICE News. "Having these sorts of fear tactics being used by a party that has governed Canada for the last 10 years is disappointing and shows a lack of leadership."

The Liberal party responded to the ads through a press release, listing off the claims as "fabrications" and calling them "outrageous."

While the Liberals promises to legalize weed, they argue that regulating and restricting access will actually keep it out of the hands of minors, who currently can tap into a flourishing illegal market. Prior to the election, Trudeau stated his support for more safe injection sites, which the Conservatives adamantly oppose. And though Trudeau did vote against a bill that outlawed buying sex work in 2014, his party's platform doesn't outline any plans to legalize brothels.

Still, the Harper campaign has stood by the ads, and defend them as factual. This isn't exactly the first time the Conservatives have made these claims either — Harper has linked the legalization of drugs and their availability to children in the past, pointing to jurisdictions in Europe and the United States.

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On Tuesday, Terence Young, the Conservative candidate in Oakville, Ont., went as far as to say the Liberals would bring in "legally protected brothels with madams and all that goes with that because the Liberals have promised to legalize the selling of women in Canada."

At a campaign stop in Brantford, Ont., Harper himself — who has also been accused of playing the politics of fear with his pledge to ban Muslim women from wearing a niqab during Canadian citizenship ceremonies — didn't shy away from the ads either. He warned the other side would "claim it's fear when all we're trying to do is draw attention to facts — facts they're not actually willing to talk about."

With a few critical days of campaigning left, however, the Tories are strategically getting these messages out through the ethnic press in battleground ridings like Richmond Hill and Markham, Ont., and Richmond and South Vancouver, B.C.

Political observers say the ads, which are arguably misleading, are a last ditch effort in the Conservatives' push for the ethnic vote, which all three parties are desperately fighting for.

Targeting swing seats in "very ethnic" ridings propelled the Conservatives to a majority government in 2011 — they chose 30 ridings where an ethnic group made up a significant portion of the population, and managed to win two thirds of them, the CBC reported.

"What the Conservatives are doing incredibly well is targeting especially conservative groups…whose moral and value compass is entrenched in the old country," explains strategist Tony Chapman.

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As part of their strategy to get the Chinese vote, the Conservatives also recently launched a Chinese-language website to reach non-English-speakers, touting their own history of supporting the community.

"Any time you can take a policy and turn it into an emotional issue, it's a great tactic to win an ethnic vote," Chapman says. "When you go into a neighborhood and you start saying three bullets are going to ricochet through your neighborhood — safe injection sites, marijuana, and brothels — that's going to create a lot of debate."

Paul Adams, a political science professor at Carleton University, says parties advertise direct messages through the ethnic press in order to reach constituencies that are cut off from the mainstream media.

"So when you put an allegation out there, especially late in the campaign, it's difficult for your opponents to counter it with their own arguments," said Adams, who called the ads "mendacious".

Of course, it's not just the Conservatives who employ targeted messaging, says Andrew Griffith, author of Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote. He points to the Liberal and NDP policy focus on family reunification, which plays well in places like Brampton, Ontario.

The Conservative ads, however, go "beyond the pail," he argued. "It's inaccurate, misleading, and it's playing with identity politics," he says.

The Conservatives' focus on the ethnic vote is part of the broader evolution of the party's approach to minorities and new immigrants, he says.

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If you go back to the days of the right-wing Reform Party, one of two founding elements of the Conservatives, "they were against everything," notes Griffiths. "They had concerns about immigration, wanted to abolish multiculturalism, they were against recognizing historical past injustices, and to their credit, they made major efforts in terms of outreach to the communities."

Focusing on ridings where ethnic voters' views would naturally align with the government's tone has become an intrinsic part of the Conservatives' election strategy, says Griffith.

At a campaign event in Brampton, Laureen Harper stole the limelight in a blue and gold salwaar kamiz, inserting herself into a bhangra song and dance routine, as her husband watched from the crowd.

That's Laureen Harper in the middle - Bollywood dancing. — Katie Simpson (@KatieSimpsonCTV)October 15, 2015

Defense and multiculturalism minister Jason Kenney's constant presence at cultural events and celebrations across the country, whether tied to the election or not, has been covered widely in the media.

Last week, at a temple in Scarborough, Kenney promised a large crowd of Tamil supporters that the Conservatives would open a high commission in the city of Jaffna. For the Iranian community, he promised easier access to consular services in Ottawa. Early in September, Kenney told the Armenian community that a re-elected Conservative government would open a trade and consular office in the capital Yerevan.

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Kenney told The Canadian Press that his party hopes to get diaspora communities more involved in foreign policy, saying that the country's "diversity is in principle a great strength for foreign and economic ties around the world and we have never really done that in a systematic way."

Fantastic event tonight with — Jason Kenney (@jkenney)October 15, 2015

"Jason Kenney's participation in all sorts of events, eating all kinds of food, and wearing all kinds of ethnic hats has become a symbol of the Conservatives' outreach efforts more broadly," says Adams. "It's the kind of thing that used to be characteristic of the Liberals."

He says that Harper's Conservatives have distinguished themselves from Conservative movements in other Western countries by paying attention to the interests of minority groups and being open to immigration, essentially diluting the Liberals' longstanding hold on those communities.

He points out, however, that while the "Liberal appeal was essentially a monolithic appeal to new Canadians," the Conservatives have "tended to be a narrower in their appeals to new Canadians or ethnic minorities, by which I mean to say they've targeted particular groups."

"They have not gone after Caribbean Canadians, or Muslim Canadians, for example," he says. "The Conservative strategy was never to win over all new Canadians."

Follow Tamara Khandaker on Twitter: @animaTK