Harper hits Winnipeg today

Only pre-approved party faithful welcome at Conservative rally

By: Mia Rabson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015

OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper will bring his campaign for another mandate to Winnipeg this afternoon.

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OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper will bring his campaign for another mandate to Winnipeg this afternoon.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/08/2015 (3694 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper will bring his campaign for another mandate to Winnipeg this afternoon.

Harper will be the first of the national party leaders to set foot in Manitoba since the Aug. 2 election call. He plans a party rally in the city with candidates and Conservative party faithful who were screened and pre-approved to attend. As of Wednesday evening, the Conservatives had not publicly released the location or time of Harper’s rally.

The Conservative party is carefully organizing every campaign stop to ensure nobody gets in who might embarrass Harper or cause a disruption. MPs and Conservative candidates were asked to let supporters know about the event, and they were sent a link to a website to apply.

CP
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will be in Winnipeg this afternoon. — CP Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will be in Winnipeg this afternoon.

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.

On Tuesday, a British Columbia reporter complained she was escorted out of the building where Harper had just made an announcement to combat drug use, after she approached people in the audience to ask their take on the legalization of marijuana.

Conservative party spokesman Kory Teneycke said Wednesday the reporter was asked to leave because workers were starting to dismantle the equipment, and nothing prevented her from speaking to people outside the venue.

Other reporters did just that without incident.

The Conservative party did drop a gag order that was initially part of the process of being approved to attend a Conservative event. At first, attendees were told they could not transmit “any description, account, picture or reproduction of the event.”

Tenecyke said that condition has been removed and it was never enforced. He called it “legal boilerplate” and said the party wants people to tweet and post photos of events.

However, Harper is the only leader whose events are being so micromanaged.

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.

To contrast with the tight control on Harper’s campaign, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is making a point of wading into crowds and attend events with unrestricted audiences.

On the weekend, someone tweeted a photo comparison of Harper’s event in Ottawa, where he was standing at a podium in front of an audience seated in lined-up rows, with Trudeau’s event in the same city, where he was surrounded by people waving signs and crowding in on him on all sides.

Harper is in Winnipeg playing defence, with at least five city Conservative MPs fighting hard to keep their jobs.

The Liberals won’t say when Trudeau will come to Winnipeg, but with the Liberals chasing the Conservatives in at least four of those ridings, it’s expected he will be here several times. He was in the city twice in July.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair plans to visit 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 universal, $15-a-day child-care program.

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

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.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Leaders hard at work Wednesday

While the Mike Duffy corruption trial dominated headlines Wednesday, the party leaders were still hard at work on the campaign trail.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper was in Vancouver, a city with a tight housing market and plenty of absentee, foreign property owners. He said a re-elected Conservative government would help would-be homeowners by raising the amount that can be drawn, tax-free, from an RRSP to finance a first home to $35,000 from $25,000. That would cost $30 million a year in forgone taxes, he said. He also promised to track how the market is affected by non-resident foreigners who snap up properties but leave them empty. By some estimates, 15 per cent of Vancouver condos are vacant as owners wait to cash in on rising prices.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair used an appearance in Levis, Que., just across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, to chide the Conservatives for what he said was neglect of the region. Standing in a riding held by Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, he said the Conservatives have not delivered federal contracts to the nearby Davie shipyard, choosing instead to tap yards in Halifax and Vancouver. The Conservatives are strong in the Quebec City region, and Mulcair hopes to shake their grip and help build on the Orange Wave of the last election.

In Regina, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau promised a kinder, gentler economic policy, one that would grow the economy from “the heart outward.” In his first campaign stop in the Saskatchewan heartland, he once again pledged help for the middle class, saying the Harper Conservatives are misguided in efforts to make the rich richer. That Tory emphasis is an error in judgment, he said. Liberals are scarce on the ground in Saskatchewan, with only Ralph Goodale giving them a toehold in Regina.

— The Canadian Press