1 week Ago By Bill Kaufmann
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made his only election appearance Friday in Calgary, a traditional Tory blue bastion widely thought to be flirting with Liberal red. And as he fired up about 3,000 of the party faithful in a hangar at 235 Aero Way N.E.
, a national poll showed his Conservatives narrowly trailing the Liberals in voter support heading into the last weekend of the election campaign. But most at the event didn’t appear to notice that gap and cheered lustily as Poilievre raked Liberal energy policies that he said are impoverishing Canadians. Noting the aviation backdrop to the rally, where the smell of jet fuel wafted through the air, the Tory leader mocked what he called the Grits’ determination to phase out conventional energy sources.
“We don’t want to give Carney any ideas — he’ll ban fossil fuels for aircraft and that won’t fly,” said Poilievre, who recalled his formative years in Calgary enjoying Fish Creek Provincial Park and working at the Stampede. “We’re going to unleash a boom in our energy sector like we’ve never seen before.” If his party triumphs in Monday’s federal election, Poilievre vowed to pass three main pieces of legislation that would improve affordability , reform criminal justice and increase employment , partly by repealing Liberal regulations governing energy projects.
He’ll do that, he said, by ensuring Parliament sits during the summer. “Canadians need change more than politicians need vacations,” he said. In a 40-minute speech, he took aim at what he called Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s plan to maintain industrial carbon taxes, including one that’ll affect the steel industry.
“He actually said the carbon tax on steel would be good for the steel industry,” Poilievre said. “It sounds an awful lot like when Justin Trudeau told us the carbon tax at the pumps would be good for your pocketbook. We know that turned out to be a lie, and now Mark Carney is repeating the same lie.
” And he said Liberal policy promoting the production and use of electric vehicles will effectively immobilize Canadians. “We’ll put you back in the driver’s seat to let you decide what kind of car you can drive,” he said to a repeated chorus of “bring it home” from the crowd. Four federal Calgary ridings predicted to be a close call Poilievre’s Calgary whistlestop near the Calgary International Airport comes as four of 11 ridings are considered to be at play in the city, an unusual scenario in a centre where the Liberals have never held more than two federal seats.
Those ridings are Calgary Skyview, Calgary Confederation, Calgary Centre and Calgary McKnight, the latter one being contested by incumbent Liberal MP George Chahal, the only Grit elected in the city in 2021. On Thursday, the Calgary Confederation Liberal hopeful cited a 338Canada poll showing his riding’s race in a statistical dead heat, while urging his supporters to get out the vote. “It’s just a projection, it’s not destiny.
But it doesn’t get much closer than this,” he said in a post on X. Several seats in typically mainly Tory blue Edmonton are also considered to be up for grabs on election day Monday. When the election writ was dropped, the Liberals held only two seats in the province.
On Thursday night, more than 1,000 people turned up to see the Conservative leader in a warehouse in Saskatoon, where he vowed to cut $50 billion from federal red ink by axing foreign aid and other wasteful spending. He also promised to tighten up bail conditions for criminal offenders and to do away with regulatory hurdles facing resource development, themes he repeated in Calgary. As the clock ticked down to an election day that appears to favour the Liberals, Poilievre implored Canadians to get out and vote for his party “for change.
” “Politics is not a spectator sport . . .
change is on the way and hope comes with a vote,” he said. “Hope is on the way.” Local Liberals say the normally robust reluctance to vote for their party has been eroded by the departure of the fiercely unpopular Trudeau and the ascent of Carney.
Their hopes have also been bolstered, say observers, by the ongoing trade war with the U.S. and President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada through economic force.
But Calgary Liberals admit they have to pull out all the stops to realize a breakthrough in the city. Calgary Conservative supporters worry about being unrepresented in Ottawa again Some at Friday’s Conservative rally were pensive, noting national polls that don’t favour their side. “It’s all about Ontario and Quebec, and it’s really easy to ignore the problems (facing the West) when it’s not affecting you,” said Spencer Wojcichowsky.
“Canadians are often very fickle and people are forgetting what the last 10 years were like.” Standing at the back of the hangar with his wife and young son, Justin Francois said the large, energetic crowd at Friday’s rally undermine Liberal hopes for major gain in Calgary. “It’s hard to believe from the turnout,” said Francois, 33.
But he noted the Conservatives don’t appear to have capitalized on American tariffs and U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats against Canada.
“A lot of people like the fact Carney is a banker and not a politician, and people don’t look further than that,” said Francois. In his only campaign stop in Calgary, on April 8, Carney drew more than 1,000 people to a rally at the Red & White Club in McMahon Stadium. During that event, Carney pitched the notion of making Canada a renewable and conventional energy superpower and also noted his younger years in Alberta.
Meanwhile, there’s been considerable eagerness to cast ballots in the city, with Elections Canada reporting the northwest riding of Calgary Crowfoot, with 33,743 votes already registered, as the fourth-largest number for advance voting in the country. They were among more than 270,000 ballots cast in advance voting in the city last week. After his Calgary appearance, Poilievre’s entourage was to fly to B.
C. for a rally Friday evening in Nanoose Bay, and an event Saturday in Delta. BKaufmann@postmedia.
com X: @BillKaufmannjrn.
