Photo: Still from video of Barlow speaking in Winnipeg.
Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow will be bringing her ‘Go Vote’ message to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick this week.
She will be in Bridgewater on Tuesday (May 19) and Moncton on Wednesday (May 20). In Bridgewater, she’ll be joined by Canadian Union of Public Employees president Paul Moist, Canadian Federation of Students chairperson Jessica McCormick, Canadian Doctors for Medicare chair Monika Dutt and actor Cory Bowles. In Moncton she’ll be with Unifor president Jerry Dias, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada president Deb Daviau and our youth vote campaigner Brigette DePape.
Barlow has already visited four cities – Vancouver, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Saskatoon – on this tour. To see a 12-minute video of her speech in Winnipeg, please click here. After the Atlantic stops, Barlow will be speaking in Scarborough (June 1), Toronto (June 18), London (June 22) and Comox (June 24).
The choice of these communities for our public forums and door-to-door canvassing fit well with a Globe and Mail analysis of swing ridings identified as important to Stephen Harper. Yesterday, columnist John Ibbitson wrote that Harper’s unusual travel stops offer a window into upcoming election. He notes that Harper travelled to Saskatoon in March, Vancouver and Winnipeg in April, Nova Scotia last week (given “no Tory seat is safe in all of Atlantic Canada”) and “a plethora of visits to the most crucial battleground: suburban ridings in and outside of Toronto” including Scarborough.
Our Go Vote tour seeks to inform Canadians about the Harper government’s record over the past nine years, to highlight that it’s time for a change, and that to make that change people need to vote.
And while we think this election is about vision and the country we want, it is instructive to look at public opinion polls. On Friday, the Toronto Star reported, “The Liberals, Conservatives and NDP are now locked in a dead heat in terms of popular support, according to a new public opinion poll by Forum Research. The survey, conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, has the Conservatives and Liberals at 31 per cent and the NDP at 30 per cent — a three-way tie, factoring in the poll’s margin of error.” The Conservatives have declined from 35 per cent last month and the NDP have jumped from 20 per cent in the polls.
The news article adds, “If these results are projected up to seats in a 338-seat House of Commons, the Conservatives would capture a minority with 131 seats. The NDP would remain the official opposition with 111 seats and the Liberals would see 95 seats, Forum says.”
We gratefully acknowledge the support from the CUPE, Unifor and the Public Service Alliance of Canada that has made this tour possible.
For more on our democracy campaign, please click here. To follow the tour on Twitter, search #GoVote2015.
Further reading
Broken Covenant: How Stephen Harper Set out to Silence Dissent and Curtail Democratic Participation by Maude Barlow
