Check out these new ad campaigns against nukes and fighter jets

Peace groups have launched several high-profile advertising campaigns in recent weeks focusing on military spending and nuclear disarmament.

The first campaign was organized by World Beyond War and the No Fighter Jets Coalition, which opposes the replacement of Canada’s current fleet of CF-18 fighter bombers.

The coalition opposes the purchase of any aircraft to replace the CF-18s, and the Canadian government is currently considering three potential aircraft models. However, the ad zeros-in on only one of the planes, the controversial F-35.

This ad campaign ran during May on Facebook and in The Tyee, a progressive online news publication based in British Columbia.

The coalition’s ad is a creative repurposing of an official ad by the maker of the F-35, Lockheed Martin. The activist campaign features the original ad extolling the selling points of the F-35, but with new text added over the original to shift its meaning.

“The F-35: Seats one. Employs thousands” from the original is rewritten to say “The F-35: Seats one. Kills thousands.”

The ads leads the viewer to the special website launched by the No Fighter Jets Coalition; http://www.nofighterjets.ca.

The military program is estimated to cost at least $19 billion; a contest between three aircraft where the controversial US-built F-35 is thought to have the inside tack on the contract, which will be awarded next year.

The second campaign displays the bold headline, “CANADIANS BACK NUCLEAR WEAPONS BAN,” and urges the Canadian government to welcome the Treaty on the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons, also known as the Nuclear Ban Treaty.

The full-page ad ran in the influential Hill Times newspaper, and takes the form of an open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau signed by many well-known members of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (a convention is another name for an international treaty).

It points out a recent Nanos poll commissioned by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Day Coalition which found that “74 percent agree that Canada should join the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”

This new campaign shifts the messaging from a previous ad campaign urging the government to debate the treaty, which it refused to do, and instead urges Canada to “welcome the Prohibition Treaty and attend as an observer the forthcoming first meeting of the 54 States Parties to the Treaty” (that is, countries who have joined the Treaty). The meeting will be held in January 2022.

Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention describes itself as a project endorsed by more than 1,000 distinguished Canadians, all of whom have been honoured by the Order of Canada.