Harper’s campaign trail winds through Winnipeg

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This article was published 12/08/2015 (4037 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be the first of the national party leaders to set foot in Manitoba during this election campaign.

The Conservative Party leader will speak at a party rally in the city on Thursday.

But there’s no word yet on the location of the event.

Harper and the Conservatives are tightly controlling his leaders’ tour and only pre-registered, vetted party faithful are being admitted to his campaign events.

Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa Conservative candidate Robert Sopuck tweeted the registration page this morning but only those whose applications are approved will get a ticket.

The ticket will have a QR code on it and attendees will be required to show photo ID as well.

Initially ticket holders were also required to promise they would not publicize anything that happened at the events, including a gag order on the transmission of “any description, account, picture or reproduction of the event.”

However the party dropped the gag order this week after it went public, saying it was never enforced and was only there because of some overzealous legal beagles.

The Conservatives say Harper will meet “average” Canadians during other campaign stops, pointing to a visit to a grocery store in Kingston, Ont., last week where Harper, his wife Laureen, and their children, mingled with the public and spoke to store staff and patrons.

Those tour stops are not open to all of the media travelling with Harper, although a pool photographer is usually permitted.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair is planning a visit to Manitoba next week. Mulcair hasn’t been to the province since last fall, when he spoke at a conference on child care about the NDP’s pledge to create a national, universal, $15 a day child-care program.

The NDP aren’t that optimistic about chances of picking up a lot of seats in Manitoba because it is being affected by the unpopular provincial NDP government but do hope to at least take back Elmwood-Transcona.

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The seat, won by Conservative Lawrence Toet in 2011, had been NDP for three decades prior to that. The NDP have put up Daniel Blaikie, son of Bill Blaikie who was the MP for Elmwood-Transcona between 1979 and 2008.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was in Winnipeg twice in July before the campaign officially began. The Liberals haven’t said yet when Trudeau will make his way back to the city but with at least six target seats in the city he will make several tour stops in Winnipeg.

Neither Trudeau nor Mulcair have leased campaign planes yet, and the leaders are travelling on commercial air for the time being. Both are expected to launch their air tours closer to Labour Day.

Harper and the Conservatives began using a leased plane this week. Last week he stuck to a tour bus and kept his campaign in Ontario and Quebec.

Harper’s party has 11 of the 14 seats in Manitoba currently but at five are considered in play for steals by the Liberals and the NDP. That includes three seats which have no incumbent, Winnipeg South, Saint Boniface-Saint Vital and Kildonan – St. Paul, and Winnipeg South Centre and Elmwood-Transcona, which the Conservatives narrowly won in 2011.