Sourcing of election material closely scrutinized during the campaign

By Shannon Proudfoot
Canwest News Service

This man won't actually benefit from the Liberal party health-care plan advertised here, because he probably is German. (Liberal Party of Canada)

As the Liberals hammer away at comparisons between Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and President George W. Bush, there's something distinctly American about the ads themselves.

The Liberal party's TV spots all feature the same male narrator who pronounces words like "economy" and "opportunity" more like a Michigan resident than a Canadian.

"It absolutely did sound oddly American," said Julia Lenardon, a voice and speech teacher at the National Theatre School, after reviewing the Liberal party's ads. "You could maybe call it a Midwest sound, a sort of American flat `a'."     

The Liberals won't divulge the identity of the voice-over actor, but spokesman George Young said the party's advertising agency hired the voice-over artist - and "nationality was not a factor."     

Another Liberal spokesman said "it's just a coincidence" if the voice sounds American.

It's hard to tell whether the actor is American by birth or imitating a typical American announcer's delivery, Lenardon says.     

Most Canadians pronounce the vowel sound in the word "jobs" like the satisfied "Ahh!" of sinking into a warm bath, she says. But when she introduces her acting students in Montreal to the shorter and flatter American accent like the one in the Liberal ads, they immediately identify it with their southern neighbours, she says.     

"Often the reaction is, 'Oh wow, that's so American!"'

From cribbed comments to visual gaffes featuring unfortunate stock photography choices, parties are running into scrutiny this campaign over where they source their materials.

The Conservatives have been dogged by revelations that Stephen Harper gave a House of Commons speech on the Iraq war in 2003 that borrowed heavily from an address by the Australian prime minister two days earlier.     

The Liberals changed an ad released last week after it emerged that the older couple pictured in it are lifelong New Democrats whose on-camera smooch made its way into a stock footage archive.

The Liberal platform book contains a full-page picture of an older man in a hospital bed being cared for by two smiling doctors under the banner "A fairer Canada." It's unlikely any of the people in the photo will benefit from Canadian health care, however, as the image is a German stock photo.

Gordon McMillan, president of Ottawa ad agency McMillan, says the extreme time constraints of a political campaign are the reason parties and their ad agencies don't simply shoot their own stock images and avoid such pitfalls altogether. Some campaigns, like the NDP's, have avoided the problem by using iconic, generic images and quick turnaround Flash animation in their ads, he says.     

But responding to events as the campaign unfolds requires easily accessible raw materials. "Using stock photography becomes about the only option," he said, adding that image catalogues don't provide any information about where the subjects live - or who they vote for.     

As for voice-over actors, McMillan says he's surprised a Canadian political party wouldn't issue clear instructions to its ad agency to find talent that reflects its voter base.     

"We work with American and Canadian firms and we actually have the opposite (problem), where we have to watch when we're sourcing Canadian talent so they don't say 'aboot,"' he said, echoing the popular consensus on how Canadians say `about.' "Really, I think for a Canadian political ad campaign, it would be absolutely critical that you would brief any firms you're working with to produce these ads to say, 'It has to be Canadian talent, and it has to be talent that votes for our party."'

     FAST FACTS:     

Source material-related gaffes have dogged all the parties in this campaign:     

• The NDP issued a mock 29th birthday greeting in honour of Stephane Dion's aging Boeing 737 early in the campaign, but the attached picture of a plane marooned on blocks and surrounded by scaffolding was actually an older 727 model.     
• The NDP accused the Liberals of copying a stars-and-stripes logo they created in 2004 to connect Liberal Leader Paul Martin with George W. Bush's missile defence scheme. The new Liberal version, on the other hand, is a send-up of a Bush-Harper ticket.     
• A Conservative attack ad aimed at the Liberals' child-care plan featured an attractive couple and their baby on a beach, but the couple actually lives in California and supports the Democrats.
• The Tories were asked to remove news clips sourced from various Canadian broadcasters and posted to an anti-Dion attack site because they violated licensing policies.