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The focus then pivots to Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and his recent appearance on CBC’s Power and Politics. In the clip, Trudeau confirms that he would indeed pull Canadian troops out of Iraq if the Liberals win the election in the fall, prompting host Terry Milewski to ask, “If you don’t want to bomb a group as ghastly as ISIS, when would you ever support real military action?”

“Terry, that’s a nonsensical question,” Trudeau responds.

That gives way to the ad’s raison d’être: a picture of Trudeau with the caption, “Just Not Ready.”

On the one hand, it’s a crudely effective ad. Indeed, there is probably no better way to show the fragility of Trudeau’s foreign policy position than juxtaposing it with actual footage of the monstrous acts he wants Canada to stop fighting against, at least in the form of the current mission. It could be said that if there’s anything nonsensical here, it’s that the leader of the Liberal party cannot answer a question about when military intervention by Canadian troops would ever be warranted.

But that’s where any justification for the Conservatives’ ad begins and ends. Setting aside the sheer repugnance of the ad for a moment, it is very possible that by repackaging and disseminating images from the Islamic State’s propaganda videos, the Tories are acting in contravention of their own anti-terror law. Bill C-51 makes it an indictable offense to create or promote terrorist propaganda, which includes any “writing, sign, visible representation or audio recording that advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offenses in general.” Suffice to say if the Tories were on the receiving end of such political attacks, they’d have no problem arguing the ad constitutes the promotion of terrorist propaganda.