Mulcair targets key B.C. ridings during final campaign push

Tom Mulcair pulled out all the stops for his final rally in B.C. on Saturday.

After a grand entrance beneath a hanging Canadian flag, the NDP leader took to a stage lit by orange spotlights at the Vancouver Convention Centre to promise voters a “clean up” in Ottawa if elected as prime minister.

“Our offer to Canadians is clear,” he said. “We will build a Canada where democratic traditions are respected at home and our reputation as a country is respected abroad.”

Despite trailing in the polls, Mulcair appeared confident as ever before thousands of supporters, many of whom toted iconic “Stop Harper” signs in addition to their orange t-shirts and pins.

British Columbia is an important battleground in the federal election and remains a three-way race between the NDP, the Conservatives and the Liberals, each party holding roughly 30 per cent support according to threehundredeight.com.

Targeting key B.C. ridings

Mulcair however, kept a strategic focus during his B.C. visit with a morning stop in Burnaby North-Seymour, where NDP candidate Carol Baird Ellen, Liberal candidate Terry Beech, and Conservative candidate Mike Little are locked in another three-way race.

Burnaby North-Seymour was the site of major Kinder Morgan pipeline protests in November last year.

During the afternoon, NDP candidates from key ridings were also invited to the stage at the Vancouver Convention Centre, including Constance Barnes (Vancouver Centre), Mira Oreck (Vancouver Granville) and Bob D’Eith (Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge).

According to the polls, each of these candidates is neck and neck with the local Conservative candidate, but face tough competition from the Liberals.

“If you want to end the Harper decade, it’s only the NDP who can defeat Conservatives,” said Mulcair. “Canadians deserve better — and by voting NDP on Monday — we will do better and build the Canada of our dreams!”

Big endorsements

Mulcair’s claims were backed with glowing endorsements from Canadian stars — two-time Juno Award-winning musician Dan Mangan, and former Ontario NDP leader and UN humanitarian Stephen Lewis.

Lewis, who introduced Mulcair, couldn’t say enough positive things about him, and enough negative things about Stephen Harper.

“Mr. Harper has made Islamophobia the centrepiece of his campaign,” he told supporters. “It’s shocking, mortifying that a prime minister of Canada would descend to such political depths in the lust to retain power.”

Both Lewis and Mulcair went after the scandal-ridden histories of the Conservative and Liberal parties, including Harper’s senate expense scandal and the recent resignation of Justin Trudeau’s campaign co-chair, who advised TransCanada on governmental lobbying.

Mulcair will rap up his “Campaign for Change” in Toronto and Montreal before ballots are cast on Monday.