Updated: Wed Sep. 19 2007 4:51:20 PM

The Canadian Press

TORONTO — A new election campaign advertisement by the Progressive Conservatives is so "offensive,'' party leader John Tory should apologize to the family of slain Toronto schoolgirl Jane Creba, Liberal campaign chairman Greg Sorbara said Wednesday.

The ad -- one of three new campaign ads released Wednesday by the Conservatives -- features a teddy bear in front of a crime scene reminiscent of where Grade 10 student Jane Creba was killed in a deadly Boxing Day shooting in 2005.

At the same time, the voice-over notes that 70 per cent of people charged with murder in Toronto in the past four years were free on bail at the time -- a fact it blames on Premier Dalton McGuinty.

"I think most people are going to be offended, and if he was man enough he would simply send the Creba family an apology,'' Sorbara said after watching the new Conservative TV spots.

"This is getting into the John Tory-Kim Campbell era of negative ads when Mr. Tory was so embarrassed that he had to pull the ad.''

Interestingly, Tory himself helped manage Campbell's disastrous 1993 campaign, which included controversial television ads that seemed to mock then-Liberal Leader Jean Chretien's facial deformity. The ads prompted a public backlash that helped sink Campbell's election hopes.

"That was 14 years ago, and I think (Tory) is relying on the fact not very many people remember that,'' Sorbara said.

Conservative campaign director John Laschinger insisted the commercial was not referencing the Creba shooting. It's a "dramatization of many situations'' from the Liberal years, designed to remind people there are consequences to broken Liberal promises, he said.

"The tragedy is that there's many more families in Ontario that have lost loved ones in the last four years under Dalton McGuinty's catch-and-release policy,'' Laschinger said.

The Conservatives have yet to issue a campaign ad that features their own party policy, the Liberals noted.

Earlier Wednesday, McGuinty said that campaign advertising for the Oct. 10 election by the Conservatives and New Democrats had been "negative'' and laden with personal attacks.

The previous Tory television ads showed an image of McGuinty's head literally shattering to pieces after highlighting broken Liberal promises -- the same ones that adorn the sticky notes that are pasted to the premier's face in the NDP's TV commercials.

"I'm in my ads and I'm in their ads,'' McGuinty said. "I think according to traditional U.S. campaign lore, if you're in the other guy's ad, it's a negative campaign.''

McGuinty said he would stay focused on the issues and stay away from personal attacks when pointing out what he considers flaws in his opponents' policies, but said he wasn't surprised by their personal attacks against him.

"They did it in '99, they did it in 2003 and they did it in 2007,'' he said.

"I'm in my ads. I want to talk about my policies and where we want to go and where we need to go as a province.''

The New Democrats fired back Wednesday, saying it was McGuinty and the Liberals who "mastered the art of negative campaigning'' long before they did, staring with last year's byelection in Toronto's Parkdale-High Park.

"His reaction is laughable,'' said New Democrat Paul Ferreira.

"This is the same Dalton McGuinty whose party launched a vicious personal attack against my colleague Cheri DiNovo during the Parkdale-High Park byelection, the same Dalton McGuinty who called members of the legislature racist for asking questions'' about grants to ethnic groups.

Another Conservative commercial highlights McGuinty's broken pledge to close all of Ontario's coal-fired generating stations by 2007 because of the negative health impacts of air pollution.

The ad features a young girl coughing after she takes a deep breath, while the voice-over says "broken promises have consequences.''