The NDP is launching a national attack on Justin Trudeau’s Liberals over their support for Canada’s controversial anti-terrorism law.

The “T minus 51” blitz — 51 days from Saturday until the Oct. 19 election — will see dozens of NDP candidates in targeted ridings from coast to coast go door-to-door with special brochures attacking the Liberals on Bill C-51.

The weekend blitz will focus on ridings with incumbent Liberals who voted for the Conservatives’ “spy bill,” NDP sources say, including Toronto MPs Adam Vaughan and Chrystia Freeland.

Olivia Chow, the former MP and failed Toronto mayoral candidate, has gone a step further and created an online attack ad accusing Trudeau and Vaughan, her opponent in the new downtown riding of Spadina-Fort York, of “betraying” constituents by voting for a “dangerous and anti-democratic” law.

NDP leaders hope C-51, which they brand a threat to the civil liberties of peaceful protesters, journalists and anyone else who opposes the government, will be the wedge issue that convinces Canadians they are the real alternative to Harper’s Conservatives.

Liberals “said they were going to Ottawa to stand up to Stephen Harper and they didn’t,” an NDP organizer in Ottawa said on background Friday.

Trudeau has said voting in favour of C-51 was in the best interests of Canadians, but that, if elected, his government would repeal parts of it and add more oversight and scrutiny for security agencies.

Vaughan, the former city councillor elected to replace Chow in a byelection last year, has told the Star the Liberals and NDP essentially want to get to the same place with anti-terrorism protections, but the Liberals want to fix the bill, while the NDP wants to kill it and start over.

Chow’s ad, to be released on social media Saturday morning, but obtained by the Star on Friday, begins with the line: “We’ve all been let down when the Liberals voted with Stephen Harper on the spy bill.”

It shows both Trudeau and Vaughan standing in May to vote for C-51. “Activist” Elliot Loran tells the camera: “The Harper government with the help of the Liberals have betrayed our values.”

Loran, an actor whose Twitter account is rife with anti-C-51 tweets, adds: “MPs are supposed to stand up and protect our rights and freedoms. Instead they voted to pass Bill C-51.”

Lawyer James Lockyer, famed for his defence of the wrongly convicted, says in the ad that C-51 gives “government spy agencies massive new powers.

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“It allows them to violate your Charter rights ’cause they don’t like what you’re saying. This doesn’t make us more secure; it makes us less free . . . Bill C-51 is dangerous and is anti-democratic.”

Chow does not mention Vaughan by name, saying only: “Yes, Canadians are so ready for change. Let’s replace fear and division with hope and optimism!”

The words are an echo of those of her late husband, former NDP leader Jack Layton, whose final message to Canadians in 2011 included: “Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.”

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