Liberal candidate compares Poilievre rallies to ‘protests’ akin to Freedom Convoy

VANCOUVER — Former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, who is now running for Mark Carney’s Liberals, dismissed the size of the crowds that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is attracting and compared them to the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests. Robertson, who is the Liberal candidate for Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby, was present during Carney’s trip to the West Coast this week. He attended the Liberal rally in Richmond on Monday evening and was at Carney’s announcement in Delta on Tuesday morning. Speaking to the press after the announcement, Robertson said he does not believe that a re-elected Liberal government would increase Western alienation, as suggested by former Reform party leader Preston Manning in a piece in The Globe and Mail last week. “Absolutely not,” said Robertson. “I think what I’m hearing on the doors here in Vancouver is incredible confidence in the message that Mark Carney and the Liberals are sharing right now in tackling the challenge from (U.S. President) Donald Trump and the tariffs.” “I don’t hear the message of Poilievre resonating at all here on the West Coast,” he added. Poilievre’s message seems to be resonating, however, with the thousands of people who have been attending his rallies. In Edmonton, where he was on Monday, he claimed 15,000 people were in attendance whereas the RCMP estimated between 9,000 and 12,000. In any case, the crowds that the Conservative leader have been attracting are huge. Liberals are also attracting big crowds, but in lesser numbers which they claim is because their rallies are announced relatively at the last minute. The Richmond rally, for instance, saw 2,000 people in a hotel conference room and another 400 people in an overflow room. Robertson said the energy in the room was “fantastic” but said “ultimately, people are going to make their choices at home” by the time the April 28 election arrives. In his opinion, Conservative rallies amount to a normal democratic exercise. “There are always going to be thousands of people who will go to protests and are not satisfied with what’s on the table,” said Robertson. “That’s the nature of democracy.” Reporters pushed back, saying those gatherings are not “protests” but political rallies. “It’s a political rally, but it’s very deeply aligned with the truck convoy rally that went to Ottawa,” said Robertson. He was referencing the “Freedom Convoy” which saw thousands of Canadians in the nation’s capital and across the country protest COVID-19 measures in the winter of 2022. Robertson added: “There’s a lot of shared resentment for government in general that people express at these rallies around the country, south of the border and in countries around the world.” “It’s a democracy. People can show up and express their feelings. We encourage that here in Canada,” he said. Carney is set to travel to Alberta for the first time of the campaign on Tuesday. National Post calevesque@postmedia.com Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.