Protesters greet Conservative campaign stop in Saskatoon
- Fraser Needham | October 07, 2015
Prime Minister Stephen Harper rolled into Saskatoon for a Conservative campaign event on the evening of October 6 but the real action was outside.
About 200 protesters, many holding orange and red NDP and Liberal “Stop Harper” signs, gathered outside Nu-Fab Building Products in northwest Saskatoon where the campaign event was held.
As is typical at Conservative events, it was a closed-door function with only the most dedicated partisans allowed in.
Conservative handlers met each guest outside a fenced in area, to check identification, before letting them in.
The crowd was well-behaved as they chanted slogans such as “Harper must go” while handlers strode nervously back and forth just beyond the perimeter of the fence.
A number of Aboriginal people were in attendance at the protest.
As is also the norm at these events, the Prime Minister did not take any questions from the media or those inside.
University of Saskatchewan professor Priscilla Settee was one of the anti-Harper protesters on hand.
She says in the final weeks of the election campaign, the Conservatives are choosing to focus on divisive issues such as highlighting their policy of banning Muslim women from wearing a full face covering niqab at citizenship ceremonies.
“I think what’s happening here, in a last ditch attempt to mobilize support, is Harper’s really played the race card,” Settee says.
Marcel Petit was also on hand at the protest.
Petit did not mince words in describing his feelings on how the Conservative government has operated and why it is necessary for change in the October 19 election.
“I think we’re all out here for the same thing,” he says. “To try and stop a dictatorship and really just kind of show that we’re watching him. Whether it’s good or bad, we’re watching him and what he’s doing and I think a lot of these people are out here because we’re seeing the worst come out in our government and this is what we want to stop.”
Rane Tom says she was in attendance because she simply does not like the direction the Prime Minister and the Conservatives are taking the country in.
She says she thinks a lot of Aboriginal people were at the event because of their dissatisfaction with the Harper government’s repeated refusal to call a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.
“The fact that he (Prime Minister) refuses to look into the missing and murdered women and they’re still going missing and being murdered, that’s a really big issue,” Tom says. “I am an Aboriginal woman, I don’t want to go missing or murdered.”
Settee, Petit and Tom all say they believe the Aboriginal vote will go up in the election.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair made stops in Saskatoon earlier in the campaign.