Let’s call the political advertisements that have been flooding television, radio, and print media all October what they really are: class warfare.

In December campaign finance restrictions kick in, including a hard cap on how much money can go towards political ads. A set of very wealthy Albertans are rushing to pour as much big money into ads as they can before that deadline hits.

It’s a small group and they’re not your average working-class folks. It’s a group of people so wealthy that they can buy billboards, newspaper advertisements, and expensive radio and television ads to push for their own interests.

In the past few weeks we’ve seen more and more of this big-money politics from one group in particular. They’re called Shaping Alberta’s Future and they’re stumping for Jason Kenney.

In just a few months they’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars--more than the Alberta Party has raised in an entire year. And they’ve put that money to work right away, buying up television ads across the province that call for worker protections to be rolled back, for minimum wage to be lowered, and for Alberta’s climate plan to be torn up.

About two thirds of that mountain of cash came from the Motor Dealership of Alberta, an umbrella group that represents car dealerships--think of the MDA as the car salesmen lobby. The MDA met with Jason Kenney on September 6th, and we’ll never know exactly what was said behind closed doors but immediately after the meeting MDA chair Andrew Robinson sent this letter out to the dealerships in the MDA.