Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will play the antagonist in a to-be-aired anti-Keystone XL pipeline ad, which shows Harper shaking hands with former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and calls the line "a sucker-punch to America's heartland".
The ad will air on Tuesday night on MSNBC, before and after U.S. President Barack Obama's state of the union address.
"The deeper we dig into the Keystone XL pipeline, the closer we get to the truth," the ad's narrator begins, as the Canadian flag dissolves into a Chinese one. The ad contends that the pipeline will benefit China and its tar sands investments more than it will the United States, and that its "carbon pollution" will be damaging to the world's environment.
"They're counting on the U.S. to approve TransCanada's pipeline," the ad says of China, "to ship oil through America's heartland and out to foreign countries like theirs.
"The oil lobbyists, politicians, they take America for suckers."
The video was uploaded to YouTube by We Love Our Land, and was produced by NextGen Climate Group and Obama donor, California billionaire Tom Steyer (Politico).
Americans have been split politically on the Keystone pipeline debate, with left-leaning opponents coming out against it and right-leaning Republicans urging Obama to push it through.
The Canadian government and the Prime Minister's office have maintained that the pipeline would benefit both Canada and the United States, and TransCanada said on Monday that Keystone's contracts are with American companies Valero Energy, ExxonMobil and Conoco.