My First Political Rally

At the Rally

       As a part of my drive to get real world experience with the Canadian political process, I attended the Conservative Party of Canada's rally in Burnaby, BC yesterday.Plus, it's also nice to stand a room of people chanting your cheering your last name, even if its not really meant for you...

Big Crowd

   As soon as we got there, we could see the crowd of protesters that had assembled with big signs with bigger slogans. It's unfortunate that some news sources have tried to turn the presence of these protesters into the main story of the day. These had zero impact on what went on inside the rally, and no one leaving the rally gave any mind to them. Nor were they protesting a single cause or issue, so any idea that this was a united group protesting solidarity for a single cause should be squashed.

   After a university student who was bounced out the door at a Conservative event for her Facebook picture with Michael Ignatieff, I was on the lookout for this sort of thing. Instead, my group encountered no problems at all, nor did we see anyone having such problems. My two friends and I were admitted in less than a minute. We were not shaken down by the RCMP or looked at sideways from a distance. The volunteers at the reception were all smiles and very friendly, seeing to it that  and we were ushered right inside.


  Inside, we found a great crowd assembled. There were Canadians of all different flavours: young and old; white, black, Indo-Canadian, Chinese, Persian; lower, middle, and upper income. Moreover, everyone was happy to be there. The rally had an atmosphere of celebration. People were genuinely happy to be there and taking part in the political process.


   I found that none of the stereotypes for an American conservative rally applied to this Canadian one. People weren't talking about a scary Federal government encroaching on our liberty,decrying the corruption of morals in our society, and other causes typical associated with conservatism in the minds of many. I find it important to note this since the Left do their best to paint the Canadian Conservative Party as a foreign branch of the USA's Republican Party, an accusation which I find really insulting to Canadian politics generally. Rather, people cheered on Harper's points that genuinely matched their concerns. The image out forth by the Left of the Conservative party being the harbinger of death, destruction, and decline really irks me. Some protester individual, clearly more enlightened than I, was even so kind as to instruct me the error of my views by calling me a "war monger".  This characterization of the base of support for the Conservative party was totally out of line from what I observed in the rally.


   It was cool to see a national leader live in living colour. Last year I hadn't been able to get into Stephane Dion's rally on the UBC campus. Seeing politicians in person can really do a lot to break down the characterizations that are built up in the media. Liberal media sources in Canada try to make Harper look like a power hungry control freak that is cold hearted and poor social skills. But I didn't get that impression at all from listening to his speech. Even though I had watched a similar speech of his on-line, it really seemed like he was just having an informal talk with his "friends".


  Here are some videos I took inside the event. I apologize for the poor camera work. My shoulder was killing me from holding the camera for so long!

Ronald Leung, Burnaby-Douglas MPP

Stephen Harper After Being Introduced By James Moore