Liberal candidate Richard Mahoney is "Standing up for Canada"

Thursday, January 19, 2006 at 10:45 AM

Liberal candidate Richard Mahoney

Ottawa Centre candidate Richard Mahoney, running for the Liberal Party, has an interesting title for this piece of campaign literature. It reads "Standing up for Canada":

Sure sounds a lot like the "Stand up for Canada!" campaign slogan that the Conservatives have been using for months.

What's wrong? "Choose your Canada" -- the Liberal Party slogan -- didn't sound good to Richard Mahoney?

Or does he hope that people might be fooled into thinking that he's actually a Conservative and so vote for him?

OK, that last one is a stretch, but then "Choose your Canada" was the Liberal slogan in the 2004 election. It's not like Mahoney was compelled to come up with his own slogan. Plus this document was created on December 30, well after the Conservatives had started using "Stand up for Canada!"

I wonder if Paul Martin knows that his candidate and former advisor is cribbing slogans from the other guys.

Frankly, I can see why Mahoney would go with the CPC slogan. "Stand up for Canada" is a call to action. It engages the citizens and lets them know that they are partners in government. It tells them that they will be expected to contribute, and to take on responsibility for themselves and for their country. "Choose your Canada" is passive. It implies that you will be handed something on a platter, and that you just to pick what exactly you want it to be.

"Choose your Canada" sounds like something a gameshow host would shout just before spinning the big wheel.

And by the way, wasn't it the Liberal Party that got its collectives shorts in a knot over copyright violations in the "Even Liberals..." Conservative campaign commercial that made use of statements made by Liberal candidates to news media?

In this case, however, I would encourage all Liberal candidates to follow Richard Mahoney's example, steal the Conservative campaign slogan, and announce that they too are "Standing up for Canada".

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Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at stevejanke.com.

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