EDMONTON—Alberta’s New Democratic Party marked Day 2 of the election campaign by rolling out an attack ad targeting Jason Kenney’s track record on LGBTQ rights.

“I helped to lead an ultimately successful initiative petition, which led to a referendum, which overturned the first gay spousal law in North America,” begins the roughly 20-year-old video of the United Conservative leader speaking while he was a member of the House of Commons.

The frame freezes on Kenney flashing a smile.

“Jason Kenney bragged about stopping dying AIDS patients from seeing their same-sex spouses in hospital,” a narrator says. “This man has been campaigning against people’s rights his whole life.

“Is this a premier?”

The advertisement was shown to reporters on Wednesday and rolled out by the NDP’s candidate for Edmonton-Glenora Sarah Hoffman, who also serves as Alberta’s deputy premier and the minister of health.

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Kenney faced questions about the clip back in December when it popped up on social media.

A reporter asked him if he regretted some of his stances on various issues and if what he was bragging about in the clip was one of them.

“Sure,” Kenney said.

Hoffman said his response “wasn’t exactly showing remorse.”

In the clip, Kenney is speaking about some time he spent in San Francisco where he helped overturn a law extending visitation rights to same-sex couples during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

“I believe Jason Kenney’s unfit to be premier of Alberta and that Albertans deserve to know who the real Jason Kenney is,” said Hoffman.

The ad will air during the election campaign on television and will be posted to social media, she said.

Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, said he wasn’t surprised to see the NDP roll out an ad going after Kenney’s character.

“We’ve seen a real contrast between the two parties in how they approach the election,” he said during an interview. “The UCP is rolling out policies and the NDP is saying, “Watch out for Jason Kenney.”

And it could be effective, he said. There’s a perception that negative ads don’t work, but that isn’t the case when there’s a grain of reality in them, Bratt said.

“They’ve been trying to plant this seed for a while and you know, Kenney is not likable. And he’s got a track record particularly on gay issues that is pretty damn bad.”

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The New Democrats will want to make the election about Kenney’s character and will shy away from the UCP banging away on the economy drums, said Bratt.

The problem is that the economy and jobs appear to be the top issues going into the election campaign and will likely remain so on April 16, when Albertans head to the polls to vote, he said.

“This has the grain of reality,” Bratt said. “The problem is, is that what people are going to vote for?”

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