Seven Oaks Magazine.

So, when Paul Martin announced that Shirley Chan, Ujjal Dosanjh, and Dave Haggard had signed on to the Liberals’ “dream team” of candidates in British Columbia, the reaction was swift and unforgiving: Their former colleagues in the New Democratic Party branded them “turncoats” of the worst kind.

Simultaneously, some Liberal party members complained that the “parachuting” of former NDP supporters into their ridings — the prime minister appointed Dosanjh, a former New Democrat premier, while party organisers set up Chan and union leader Haggard for acclamation — disrespected prospective candidates and the democratic process.

Now, as the Liberals fight hard to turn B.C. voters away from the New Democrats and Conservatives in the federal election, the party is flaunting the three “star candidates” in a new television advertisement. The ads, which began airing June 1, depict Chan, Dosanjh, and Haggard walking together in a Vancouver park, followed by a message from the prime minister.

“We’ve always backed the NDP,” Dosanjh says in the ad. “Today, there’s a better choice.”

In a telephone interview, Haggard, who stepped down as president of the 55,000-member Industrial, Wood, and Allied Workers of Canada last month after his candidacy was announced, said he turned away from the New Democrats when Jack Layton became the party’s leader.

That’s when the Liberals came calling. Haggard said Martin’s talk of ending so-called western alienation helped convinced him to switch teams.

“I decided that the NDP weren’t going to make the policy changes that I supported, and if they didn’t make those changes, then in all likelihood, that party was never going to be in power in this country,” the Liberal candidate in New Westminster-Coquitlam said. “I believe you can only make changes if you’re government.”

Haggard said he hopes the ad will encourage voters to consider their options carefully.

But Dr. Norman Ruff, associate professor of political science at the University of Victoria, said the ad, along with the “parachuting” of the three NDP defectors, probably won’t have the impact the Liberals are hoping for.

“The ad is a very hard visual portrayal of what the Liberals were hoping to do by recruiting those three,” Ruff said. “I think for NDP voters, it has a kind of reaction. They all see it, and they see that these three are the three sell-outs. So, I don’t think it’s likely to shift the core NDP support.”

These tactics won’t likely sway soft New Democrat supporters either, the political scientist asserted.

“My sense is, at the moment, that the ad will backfire,” Ruff said. “It will harden the NDP resistance to that kind of appeal. I think any kind of audience receptive to that is very, very small in the province.”

Bill Tieleman, a political columnist with Vancouver’s Georgia Straight newspaper and one-time communications director for former NDP premier Glen Clark, called the ad a “desperate attempt” by the Liberals to hold on to their six seats in B.C.

“In my view, this is a defensive ad. It’s not a ‘win more seats’ ad,” Tieleman said by telephone. “It’s an attempt to hold some of the seats that they have, which I think, at the moment, is extremely dubious. But they’re certainly not in expansionary mode, or if they are, they’re crazy.

“It’s also sort of pathetic, really,” the columnist said. “I think people in politics don’t generally like turncoats — don’t generally like people who change parties — and a party leader and premier who changes, in particular, is quite distasteful to people.”

Lately, the federal Liberals have appeared to be trying to dissociate themselves from unpopular Liberal governments in B.C., Ontario, and Québec. Cuts to social programs and labour unrest in B.C. and Québec have led to backlashes against premiers Gordon Campbell and Jean Charest. Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty raised taxes in May despite an election promise to do otherwise.

After vandals shattered windows at the Vancouver offices of Liberal MP Hedy Fry and Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt May 31, Fry told them via TV cameras that they should “do some homework,” because “the federal Liberals are a totally different party, both legally and constitutionally.”

But Tieleman asserted that federal Liberals repudiating their provincial counterparts are being disingenuous. There are many ties between the B.C. and federal Liberals, he explained. For instance, Mark Marissen, the Liberals’ campaign chair in B.C., is married to Deputy Premier Christy Clark.

“There are major connections,” he said, “and hiring Ujjal Dosanjh and Dave Haggard for a few weeks won’t change that.”

Now the leader of the New Democrats is playing up the B.C. Liberals’ links to both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties on the campaign trail.

“If you like what Gordon Campbell’s doing, vote for Paul Martin. If you love what Gordon Campbell’s doing, vote for Stephen Harper,” Layton said June 1 during a stop in New Westminster. “But if you want to send Gordon Campbell a different message, a better message, then I invite you to vote for the NDP.”

In a telephone interview, Marissen said the ad was intended to paint the Liberals as an alternative to the Conservatives. But the campaign chair wouldn’t admit to any attempts to distance the federal party from the Campbell government.

“It’s not about provincial politics at all,” he said. “It’s about federal politics.”

Marissen called the ad “very proactive” and denied it was a defensive measure.

“It is a very positive ad talking about our team,” he said, “where we’ve reached out to British Columbians from across the political spectrum to make sure that British Columbia’s voice is heard in Ottawa.”

There’s a lot of respect out there for Chan, Dosanjh, and Haggard, Marissen said, adding that anyone who considers them traitors is a lost cause for the Liberals anyway.

In a May 13 column in the Georgia Straight, Tieleman questioned whether Haggard made a deal with the Liberals to secure a federal appointment after the election. He pointed out that the former union leader’s odds of winning aren’t good, since Conservative MP Paul Forseth took the riding by over 6,000 votes over the Liberal runner-up.

Over the telephone, Haggard, whose campaign has been plagued by rumours he could pullout at the last minute, denied and disagreed with those charges. “I don’t plan on losing the election, and I have no commitment on anything other than running for this election. I plan on doing that, and I plan on winning.”

Asked how he felt about being labelled a traitor, Haggard replied: “I’ve never turned my back on working people in my life, and I have no intention to. It’s Jack Layton that’s turned his back on workers, in my view.”

Tieleman’s column, however, noted that Haggard and the IWA helped the Campbell government privatise thousands of health care jobs, leading to the Hospital Employees’ Union strike that put the province on the verge of a general strike in May.

Bev Meslo, Dosanjh’s NDP opponent in Vancouver South, said she’s campaigning full out, because all signs point to a close election.

“We are going to have fireworks in this riding,” Meslo said. “I would not be surprised if Canada waited for the results of Vancouver South. I think it’s going to be, like, one o’clock in the morning here, and they’re going to be waking up in Ontario still not knowing.”