MONTREAL - A fictional military mom packs an AK-47 into a duffel bag. She adds a stuffed doll. Then, staring coldly into the camera, she says she might never have had kids had she known they'd grow up to become "cannon fodder" in Afghanistan.
These images are part of a new anti-war video designed to shock. It appears to have succeeded and is now pitting a fake military mother against real ones.
The video calls on the government to withdraw Canadian troops from Afghanistan and to put an end to the military's efforts to sign up new recruits in Quebec schools.
"It's like she spat on our children," said Celine Lizotte, whose son was killed by a roadside bomb last year in Afghanistan.
"She's spitting on our children and she's spitting on us as well because it's as if (she's saying) we shouldn't have brought these children into the world."
Some soldiers' families are condemning the minute-long video, which has triggered an online flood of comments from irate Canadians.
But the woman's group that shot the video stands firmly by its creation.
"It's an approach that's trying to provoke a debate that the government doesn't want to have," Quebec Women's Federation president Alexa Conradi said in an interview Thursday.
"It's one perspective that speaks to the anguish, but also the anger towards the army itself and how it uses our children."
The video, which has been posted on the organization's website and on YouTube, features an actress portraying a mother angered that her daughter was recruited at school by the military.
"If I had known that in giving life, I would be providing cannon fodder, I might not have had a child," the woman says as she tucks a stuffed lamb, a bra, bright-coloured underwear and an assault rifle into a dark-green duffel bag.
The fictional mother says her oldest child was killed in Afghanistan, while her youngest returned from the war with mental problems.
"People say, 'Make love, not war,' but, come on, that's not what they should say," the actress says as she stares into the camera.
"What they should say is 'Make love for war,' because it takes a lot of children to build an army."
Conradi insists the federation's aim was to make a provocative political point — not insult soldiers or their families.
But in many cases, it did just that.
Lizotte describes the woman's cold, virtually emotionless performance as a stab at those who have gone through the pain of losing loved ones in combat.
After watching the video, Lizotte says, she shared an emotional moment with a picture of her boy.
"I looked at my son's photo and I cried," she said of her initial reaction upon viewing the clip.
Her son Jonathan Couturier, 23, was a member of the 2nd Battalion, Royal 22e Regiment, based in Valcartier, Que.
A native of the Quebec City suburb of Loretteville, Couturier was killed in September 2009, about 25 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city.
More than 2,000 members of coalition forces have been killed in the ongoing Afghan conflict, 152 of whom were Canadian. These figures don't include the untold number of Afghan civilian casualties.
Canada has already announced an end to combat operations next year. Some military families have urged the country to keep fighting, in order to finish the job their loved ones died for.
"I'm sorry but my son was not cannon fodder," Lizotte said Thursday in an interview.
"If she wants to send a message to (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper, she should find another way to do it."
Lizotte has created a Facebook group to denounce the video.
On Thursday, hundreds of people rushed to join her page, titled: "Soldiers aren't cannon fodder," and to express their outrage.
"I am the mother of a soldier who leaves for Afghanistan at the beginning of December and my son is not and will never be cannon fodder!" Christiane Collin wrote on the Facebook group's wall.
"He is a soldier by choice and I respect his decision!"
Many echoed Lizotte's call for the video to be removed, but Conradi insitied that many military mothers agree with her federation's position.
Conradi also refused to bend Thursday to Lizotte's demands.
"We won't be taking down the video," she said.
"Our criticism is not of the military officers, nor of their mothers, it's a criticism and a demand of accountability to the army and the Canadian government."