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We'll help Canadian parents who adopt children by increasing the value of the Adoption Expense Tax Credit to $20,000 http://t.co/VsZPEU59CS — Stephen Harper (@stephenharper) August 20, 2015

Not surprisingly, the picture comes as yet another example of the use of stock photography in political communication, in which models merely pretend to be the kind of Canadians who will benefit from whatever policy is being proposed.

And, as is so often the case, the only people making any money from the pictures are foreigners while Canadian photographers are shut out. The photo used in the Tory ad was taken by photographer Jure Gasparič, who lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

According to his Facebook page, Gasparič snapped the stock image when the family visited the Tivoli park in Ljubljana in August 2012.

Mom Naja Ferjan Ramirezmay come from Slovenia originally but now resides in Seattle with the child’s father, Rafael Alejandro Ramirez. They both work at the University of Washington in Seattle, according to their Facebook pages. There’s no sign either are Canadians who one day might benefit from a tax credit.

Further, it looks like the adorable child used in the picture to promote the increased adoption tax credit is not actually, uh… adopted.

Pictures on Naja’s Facebook page show the newborn child in hospital, with mom and dad, immediately after birth.

Rather, whoever assembled the ad appeared to confuse the concept of international adoption — many kids adopted in Canada come from other countries and are of different ethnicity than their parents — with children born biologically to couples of different races. (In this case, mom is white and dad is black or Latino.)