Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says he's going to "mess" with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but that won't include personal attack ads.
Ignatieff, who has faced a barrage of Conservative attack ads aimed at him in recent weeks, insists that the government's record is so poor, personal attack ads are unnecessary.
"There's enough on the record that we can attack: record unemployment, record bankruptcies, record deficit," he said in Dartmouth, N.S., Sunday. "That should give us enough to be getting along with.
Ignatieff was attending a provincial election campaign stop in Nova Scotia to throw his support behind his provincial colleagues.
Speaking in Gander, N.L. Saturday, Ignatieff said the prime minister must learn, "If you mess with me, I will mess with you until I'm done."
"Don't trifle with me. Don't try this rough stuff with me," he added Sunday.
The Conservatives have launched an Internet and television ad campaign attacking Ignatieff for his lengthy time out of the country, and attempt to portray Ignatieff as an out-of-touch elitist.
The ads point out his 34 years spent teaching and writing in the U.S. and Britain and say he will go back to Harvard University if he doesn't become prime minister.
Ignatieff has responded with an Internet ad saying that Harper is smearing all new Canadians with the attack ads.
It was a similar line used by Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella on CTV's Question Period Sunday.
"I have two words for this kind of advertising. Wayne Gretzky, or Neil Young, or Celine Dion. I mean is the prime minister saying that those people are less Canadian?" he said.
Tory strategist Tim Powers laughed off that defence and called it a "bad counterattack."
"The challenge Mr. Ignatieff has, it's not that he lived outside the country, it's what he said when he was outside the country," Powers said on Question Period.
With files from The Canadian Press
