Yesterday, I looked at the new round of Conservative attack ads en anglais. Today, a look at the four new French ads – a rare glimpse of Harper’s Quebec strategy which, let’s be honest, never really lived up to expectations.

Since everyone has gone all nostalgic for 2006, let’s remember that Harper picked up 10 seats and 25% of the vote in Quebec that campaign. Since then? He usually polls in the teens and one of the few safe seats in the province is held by an MP who goes rogue more often than Sarah Palin.

So what’s the plan to turn it around?

Faire face au défi: Like the English version, this ad emphasizes Harper’s steady hand in turbulent times – clearly, this will be the Tory pitch in both official languages.

Sadly, it’s a frame for frame replica of the Enligh one – I was really hoping the Beatles mug would be replaced with a Roch Voisine one or something. The only distinctiveness going to the Quebec nation is a slightly different job figure:

On the same vein, “fardeau fiscal” is really just a french version of the tax attack.

There are, however, two distinct ads:

This one features Liberals Justin Trudeau, Nancy Charest, and (surprise!) Denis Coderre bad mouthing Ignatieff. The Trudeau clip is from the ’06 leadership – I pointed out how ridiculous it was to use that clip when the Tories ran version 1.0 of this ad in 2009. This time around, all I’ll say is that telling Quebecers someone named Trudeau and someone named Charest don’t like Ignatieff might actually do wonders to help Iggy in La Belle Province.

The final ad is the most interesting of the four:

In it, Duceppe is attacked as being “too Montreal” – I’m sure Larry Smith can’t wait for this one to air. The tag line of “notre region au pouvoir” is more proof the Tories will be running a very regional campaign in Quebec…and that region won’t be Montreal.