Aperte.org Jeremy Handcock

After witnessing the success of Barack Obama's web campaign in the Democratic Party's nomination race this year, I think Canadian political parties are starting to become a little more web-savvy in communicating their messages. We're only three days into the federal election campaign and the major parties have all mounted a pretty substantial web presence.

The Liberals and Conservatives have both launched issue-specifc websites in addition to their standard party websites. The parties are also getting into social networks: the Liberals and New Democrats both provide links on their party websites to their communities on Facebook and YouTube. The New Democrats are even using FriendFeed, Twitter, and Flickr.

I browsed through the different online campaigns today: Overall, kudos to the Conservative Party for its attempts at interactivity on the issue-specific websites, brilliant idea with the attack ad creator, but the juvenile mudslinging and crappy Flash applications leave a little to be desired. The New Democrats have social networking wrapped up the best, while the Liberals have kept things pretty vanilla on the high road.

Conservative Party

The primary message of the Conservative campaign is that Stephen Harper is the best leader for Canadians -- recent polls show that a majority of Canadians seem to think so -- and a lot of the Party's strategy has been to attack Stéphane Dion on his leadership abilities.

NotALeader.ca is pretty much pure partisan mudslinging expressed in a poorly designed Flash application. Earlier today, the website had a picture of Stéphane Dion with a puffin defecating on him before the Party shut it down and Stephen Harper apologized. Hilarious, yes, but kinda shameful. Stay classy, Tories!

NotALeader.ca also features DionBook, a faux Facebook profile for Stéphane Dion and other Liberal Party heavyweights. Generally pretty lame. (Note: As I'm posting this, DionBook is offline because it exceeded its bandwidth limit). There's also Kyoto's Dog Blog, a faux blog authored by Stéphane Dion's dog Kyoto: there's no coherent message on the blog and the content doesn't make a lot of sense. Also lame.

The best part of NotALeader.ca is the ad creator. It's an interactive, Flash-based video editor where you pick and choose video clips to build your own Stéphane Dion attack ad. I think it's brilliant.

Good times, even though I'm a card-carrying Liberal. Click here to view my ad (sorry, I can't embed the video). This is a transcript:

Announcer: Did you know Stéphane Dion eats his hot dog with a fork and knife?
Stéphane Dion: No change. I am who I am. The solution... I have no magic solution to offer on that.
Announcer: Is it any wonder Dion has been called "stuck in the summer of love"? Stéphane Dion. Not a leader. Not worth the risk.

Another issue-specific website by the Conservative Party is WillYouBeTricked.ca, a second example of why most Flash websites suck. The purpose of the site is to attack Stéphane Dion's Green Shift plan to implement a carbon tax offset by income tax reduction in Canada.

Liberal Party

The Liberals launched ThisIsDion.ca today, no doubt in response to NotALeader.ca and Harper's sweater vest ads. It emphasizes Stéphane Dion's past leadership accomplishments like his role in the Clarity Act. It also features a number of videos of Dion doing humanizing things like playing ball hockey, skiing, and hanging out with family. Thankfully, no sweater vest. The website's Flash version is easy enough to get around and they offer an HTML version as well.

The Liberals also launched Scandalpédia today, a Wikipedia style catalog of all the scandals that have occurred under Stephen Harper's government. Although I'm not sure I'd classify them all as scandals, here are a few of my favorite entries:

• Bernier Affair
• NAFTAgate
• Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL)
• Lukiwski Tape (contains some offensive language)

TheGreenShift.ca is the online face of Stéphane Dion's plan to implement a carbon tax offset by income tax reduction. It has a nifty calculator on it that you can use to estimate your income tax savings to offset the carbon tax when the policy implementation is complete.

New Democratic Party (NDP)

The New Democrats took a play directly out of Barack Obama's book by putting a campaign donation request on the landing page. The first time you visit the NDP.ca, Jack Layton asks you for money. I'd be interested to see analysis of how much this strategy increases donations (if at all).

The NDP is certainly more into social networking than the other parties: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, FriendFeed, and Flickr links are all displayed prominently on the main page.