Conservatives launch massive ad campaign amid surge in polls

The Conservative Party of  Canada is launching a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that depicts its leader, Pierre Poilievre, as a family man who wants to fix the country — all while his party is soaring in the polls and his main rival is going through a public split with his spouse.

"This is not a branding campaign. This is an amplification of who Pierre is and always has been," said Regan Watts, a former adviser to several ministers in the Harper government. 

"He's warm, he's kind, he's empathetic and he listens… It's important for people to delineate between Parliament Hill and the rest of the country, engaging with Canadians one-on-one. "

Two of the three ads focus on showing a more human side of Poilievre, whose aggressive, bulldog style has seen him spar with journalists and politicians alike, prompting Maclean's magazine to ask "Why is Pierre Poilievre so angry?"

A senior Conservative source confirmed to CBC News that the party will spend more than $3 million over three months to push three bilingual ads in every province and territory.

The ads will air on TV, radio, digital platforms and print media.

Polling analyst Éric Grenier, the author of TheWrit.ca, says the timing of the campaign makes sense.

"Usually when there is a new leader in place and Canadians don't know a lot about them, there is an attempt to try to make them seem more like a likable person," he said.

The first ad features voice-over from Poilievre's wife, Anaida, a Montreal-raised Venezuelan immigrant who has been described in a Quebec newspaper as Poilievre's "hidden ace" in Quebec.

"Who is Pierre Poilievre?" she narrates, before showing the Conservative leader at different stages of his life, including playing hockey while growing up in Calgary, and playing with his own children.

"And I know him as a guy who loves me for who I am," she says in the ad. "A Canadian, who came to call Canada home, and his wife." 

It was released less than a week after Justin Trudeau's high-profile separation from his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau.

The second ad shows Poilievre sitting with his son, doing a puzzle.

"Everything feels broken in Canada. Unaffordable, unsafe, divided. But we can put the pieces back together," he says in voice-over.