I'm certain we all have opinions about the use of attack ads during election campaigns. The key there is "during election campaigns."

What about parties that run attack ads where there is no election campaign going on?

Of course i am referring to the latest round of attack ads launched by the Conservative party against Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. And while i know we commonly say that with a minority government situation, parties are always in election mode, there is no election on the horizon. The Conservatives have far more money to spend than any of the other parties (probably combined), and annoyingly for them, there are limits to how much of that cash they can spend during actual election campaigns. Hence why they like to use up some of their excess funds by running ads when there's no election going on.

Should the Elections Canada Act be amended to ban this sort of obvious non-campaign campaigning?