Tories hold biggest rally of election campaign but fail to reach desired attendance

“All campaigns are to pull your people off the doors, yes I actually said pull your people off the doors, and have them … come to this event,” wrote Georganne Burke, referring to shifting volunteers away from knocking on voters’ doors.

“Don’t bother to argue with me about this. I am not asking. I am telling,” she wrote, in an email whose authenticity was reluctantly confirmed by the party.

Friday’s event was not about candidates, the email continued, “as much as the crowd size. We want a minimum of 1,000 people.”

In the end, significantly fewer people showed. About 500 people cheered as Tory star Lisa Raitt, candidate for Milton and former cabinet minister, introduced Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.

Scheer’s team organized a type of rehearsal the night before, when a couple of hundred people gathered to hear the leader speak at a Chinese restaurant in Halifax.

The Conservatives’ current strategy is a marked departure from early in the campaign, when they organized few events of any significant size.

Despite the low turnout — considering what Burke’s email had called for — supporters were boisterous and roared when Scheer gave his classic campaign lines about cutting the carbon tax, and giving Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau the boot from office.

Several local candidates attended the rally, including Jasveen Rattan, candidate for York South-Weston.

She said she wasn’t aware of how many people the party wanted to attend the rally. “I was told by my campaign manager where I had to be and what time I had to be here.”

Scheer has been on the defensive most of the week about his personal views on abortion, his previously unknown dual Canadian-American citizenship, and his performance in the first televised French leaders’ debate, which was widely panned by Quebec pundits.

Earlier on Friday, Scheer unveiled his team’s tough-on-crime agenda, promising mandatory minimum sentences for certain gun crimes and to list known street gangs in the Criminal Code, similar to the way terror groups are identified.

Scheer’s policies focus on punishing criminals as opposed to banning weapons — the approach pursued by his main opponents, the Liberals. Scheer called the Liberal plan “lazy and ineffective” because it creates more laws for “law-abiding” gun owners to follow, which he said are ignored by criminals.

“What this plan does is goes after those repeat and dangerous offenders,” Scheer said at Toronto hotel, flanked by plain clothes police officers and people who work with victims of crime. “And its on the advice of various police chiefs from across the county … We are listening to the experts on this issue.”

Conservatives chose Toronto, the city where calls are loudest for governments to do more to combat gun crime, to announce their plans.

Scheer said, if elected, his government would establish five-year minimum sentences for people who are convicted of ordering or participating in violent criminal activity as well as for those caught possessing a smuggled firearm.

His government would also extend what’s known as reverse onus bail hearings, where its up to the defendant to show grounds for release instead of up to the prosecutor to show grounds against release, to all gang members. Scheer also wants to “reduce court delays” by listing known gangs in the Criminal Code, the same way the government lists terrorist entities such as Al Qaida and Hamas.

“This will spare prosecutors from repeatedly having the establish that the gang in question is a known entity with criminal intent each time a gang member is on trial,” he said.

Scheer also promised a Canada Border Services Agency task force to work with their American colleagues to disrupt gun smuggling routes.

He cited Toronto police chief Mark Saunders in saying that 80 per cent of guns in the hands of gang members are coming into Canada illegally from the U.S.

Liberal candidate for Scarborough Southwest and former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair tweeted that Scheer “doesn’t want to talk about guns” and is instead trying to “bring American-style gun laws to Canada.”

The Liberals’ plan bans all so-called “military-style assault rifles,” creates a gun buy-back program and seeks to give authority to municipalities to further restrict or ban handguns.

Scheer said that plan won’t work to reduce gun crime because “a drug dealer doesn’t stop to think, ‘Do I have the right permit?’ as he’s travelling from one part of the (city) to another to sell illegal drugs.”

He said creating more laws and restrictions on firearms will only create more headaches for law-abiding people an shift “precious” police resources away from focusing on violent crime.

At a recent campaign event, Toronto-area mayors welcomed the Liberals plan — but they said it didn’t go far enough. Local leaders said they wanted a national prohibition on handguns.

But Marcell Wilson, co-founder and co-executive director of Toronto’s One By One, which works with at-risk youth, said he prefers the Conservative plan.

Wilson, a former leader of what he called one of the largest gangs in the country, the United Blood Nation, stood behind Scheer during the announcement on Friday.

“Banning legal guns doesn’t affect my community whatsoever,” said Wilson, who grew up in a Toronto housing project called Swansea Mews. “We work directly with gang members and offenders coming out of prison and none of us — including me — were (gun permit) carriers.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 4, 2019.

Giuseppe Valiante, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Tories hold biggest rally of election campaign but fail to reach desired attendance

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