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OTTAWA -- The federal Conservatives open up a new front this week in their public relations war against Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's green shift plan.
Conservatives will start running anti-Dion radio advertisements Tuesday in Nova Scotia, with particular emphasis in the riding of Scott Brison.
Brison is hosting a meeting of Atlantic Liberal MPs in Digby, N.S., this week.
Liberals and Conservatives are statistically tied when it comes to voter support in Atlantic Canada, according to the latest Ipsos Reid poll done exclusively for Canwest News Service and Global National.
The Conservatives now believe they have the means to break that logjam by hammering Dion and Atlantic Canada Liberals on the costs of the green shift.
"We wouldn't be advertising if it wasn't politically important and relevant," said Kory Teneycke, the prime minister's director of communications.
The essence of Dion's green shift plan is to place a new tax on carbon, a key source of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, while at the same time providing an income-tax cut for all Canadians to help offset any increases in the cost of energy.
Conservatives say that Liberal MPs from the region, such as Brison, Wayne Easter, and Dominic Leblanc have been soft-pedalling the costs of their party's green plan.
Still, a concerted public relations campaign by the Conservatives in other parts of Canada, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper's denunciation of Dion's plan as "crazy" and "insane" has, so far, failed to move the political dial much, Ipsos Reid said last week.
Nationally, support for the Conservatives is at 34 per cent, up two percentage points over the last six weeks, while the Liberals are at 30 per cent, down two percentage points. Because the poll's margin of error is 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, the conclusion of the pollsters is that there has been virtually no movement in support of either of the two parties.
That said, Conservatives are hopeful of making some modest gains in the next general election in Atlantic Canada. They are targeting between one and three seats in Nova Scotia, including Brison's, one in Prince Edward Island where they hold no seats and two in New Brunswick.
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