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Political action committees, or Super PACs as they’ve become known in the United States, are a popular American political tool whereby enormous sums of money are often collected to endorse or oppose specific candidates or pieces of legislation.

The HarperPAC advisory committee includes Conservative activist Stephen Taylor, former director of the National Citizens Coalition (he spurred the #BoycottTims campaign earlier this month when Tim Hortons decided to pull Enbridge ads from its Tims TV), as well as a number of longtime seniors staffers in the Harper government and former Alberta justice minister Jonathan Denis.

“Unions in Canada have amassed a war chest of millions and plan to relentlessly attack Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. We are levelling the playing field,” Taylor, spokesman for HarperPAC, said in a news release Monday.

“Justin Trudeau represents dangerous and unpredictable change, while Thomas Mulcair’s NDP is eager to implement the same disastrous economic formula that ruined provinces for whole generations.”

The political action committee says it will raise money from “concerned Canadians” across the country to push back against such attacks.

The group says it is purchasing advertising to “inform Canadians of the important choices they face on election day in October.”

The release says HarperPAC is a project of the “ConservativePAC Foundation.” In an email, Taylor said the ConservativePAC Foundation is a non-profit corporation registered with Industry Canada, of which he is the sole director.

Asked if ConservativePAC Foundation is planning other campaigns leading up to the election, Taylor said HarperPAC “is the only focus right now.”

Earlier this month,a group called Engage Canada, which is organized by some former Liberal and New Democratic political operatives and partially funded by unions, launched its own anti-Conservative ad campaign designed to help end the Harper government’s almost decade in power. The group calls itself “a broad based, grassroots organization.”

The latest Engage Canada ad, titled Neglect, says “inequality is skyrocketing” under the Conservative government, and that income for the wealthiest five per cent has increased 12 times faster than for the rest of Canadians.

“For too long, wealthy conservative Super PACs like Working Canadians and Conservative Voice have spent millions protecting wealthy conservative interests and monopolizing political discussion in Canada,” Engage Canada says on its website. “The middle class in Canada is struggling and the Harper Conservatives have only made things worse.”