One of my old Calgary friends now working in the PMO gave me the inside scoop on the new Ignatieff attack ad blitz, set to launch within the next two weeks. The campaign will be titled “not a Canadian”, similar to the “not a leader” ads used to brand Dion. True to Conservative form, rather than attacking on substance, they will be wrapping themselves in the Maple Leaf and attacking Ignatieff’s patriotism.

The twist to this one is that it won’t feature TV commercials – instead the the Tories have signed a multi-million dollar sponsorship deal with Tim Hortons. [Gosh, I wonder how much Patrick Muttart state-of-the-art polling it took them to figure out this was the best way to reach the Tim Hortons crowd, eh?]

The face of the campaign will be “Lenny the Leaf” (pictured above). Lenny will be on every Tim Hortons coffee cup coast-to-coast (only he’ll be “Pierre le Poisson” au Quebec) – the cups will be equipped with heat sensors, so that once the coffee begins to cool, Lenny will shout out “hey you” and then recite facts about Ignatieff as customers drink their coffee.

While I don’t have a list of the specific “facts” the Tory war room has dug up, I’ll suggest the following, in the spirit of this campaign:

“Michael Ignatieff prefers NFL-rules football”

“Michael Ignatieff went to a philosophy lecture rather than watch game 8 of the Summit Series”

“Michael Ignatieff does not enjoy talking about the weather”

“Michael Ignatieff enjoys Coors Light”

“Michael Ignatieff, when he gets bumped into by accident, does not apologize“

I also have it on good authority the Tories have pitched the idea of having specialty puffin shaped donuts sold (with a hidden tax on them), but it’s unclear if Tim Hortons will go for this or not.

My initial reaction is that this one will backfire spectacularly, but the Tory attack machine has a good track record, so I may be wrong. I’ll be sure to post more information as it leaks out.