Two Canadian media outlets have expressed their displeasure to the Conservative party after seeing their footage used in attack ads without their permission.

On Monday the Conservative party launched a trio of attack ads — two in English, one in French — looking to paint new Liberal leader Justin Trudeau as lacking substance and not up to the task of being prime minister.

All three include footage filmed by Huffington Post reporter Althia Raj, and one uses an interview segment from an October 1999 CTV W5 documentary.

The Huffington Post video, from a November 2011 fundraising gala dinner for the Canadian Liver Foundation, shows Trudeau on a catwalk stripping down to his undershirt amid cheers from the crowd. He reportedly raised $1,900 for the foundation.

But HuffPo never gave the Conservatives permission to use the tape.

“The video clip was taken from The Huffington Post Canada without our permission or knowledge. We are making our concerns known to the Conservative Party of Canada,” managing editor Brodie Fenlon said in an email.

The same applies to the use of the Trudeau interview from a W5 documentary segment concerning the 1972 FLQ crisis.

“A clip was used from a 1999 CTV News special, without permission. CTV News has made its concerns known to the Conservative Party of Canada,” said Wendy Freeman, the president of CTV News.

Despite not getting either outlet’s permission, however, the Conservatives aren’t necessarily guilty of copyright infringement.

According to University of Ottawa copyright law expert Michael Geist, it would likely come down to whether or not they qualify for an exception under the Copyright Act.

“The basic principle when you use someone else’s work is — either you have permission or you qualify for an exception under the Copyright Act. As I understand it, they don’t have permission, and so then the question becomes: does it qualify for an exception?”

The most obvious exception is what’s known as fair dealing, Geist explained, but fair dealing requires attribution.

While the CTV clip is attributed, the Huffington Post material is not.

But that doesn’t mean attribution is all that’s necessarily required, Geist clarified, it would only allow them to potentially qualify.

“It’s not even clear that they would in those circumstances, but without attribution — you don’t even get out of the starting gate with respect to fair dealing,” he said.

The only other way they could avoid infringement is by using the new non-commercial user-generated content provision, Geist followed.

“In theory, it might apply. But even there, you’re supposed to provide attribution where possible.”

This is not the first time Conservatives have taken journalistic material for attack ads without permission.

In 2007 an attack ad aimed at then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion used footage from a Liberal leadership convention shot by CPAC for a consortium of broadcasters.

At the time, CPAC anchor Peter Van Dusen told The Canadian Press that requests for the footage would have gone through him and the answer would have been “no.”

Conservative party spokesman Fred DeLorey did not respond to requests for comment.