Sunday, March 29, 2009

Ignatieff Does British Columbia

From all accounts, Ignatieff is having a very successful extended tour of British Columbia. A big crowd in Kamloops, 800 people in Vancouver that added another two hundred thousand to the Liberal coffers, and a "overflow" crowd on Vancouver Island yesterday:

Ignatieff attracts overflow crowd for town-hall session

Federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff continued efforts to bolster his party’s popularity in B.C. with a town-hall meeting in Saanich Saturday that attracted an overflow crowd. It was the third stop on his B.C. tour, which targets voters outside the province’s large urban centres. On Friday he was in Squamish, and the night before, in Kamloops.

More than 300 people jammed the Spectrum Community School theatre, with chairs hastily assembled on the stage behind Ignatieff. Even then, some were forced to listen via speakers in the hallway.

Ignatieff spent an hour responding to audience questions. “It’s the way of getting close to what people are thinking,” he said in an interview with the Times Colonist before the town hall.

I read elsewhere, that when the overflow was included, there were an estimated 500 people in audience. Almost as important as the attendance, the way that attendance forces positive headlines. "Jammed" seems a recurring theme for Ignatieff, where ever he travels, and that drawing capacity denotes a party on the move, somebody to be taken seriously. Especially encouraging, Ignatieff is making dents where he has to, in many ways British Columbia will be the key in the next election. Good stuff.

2 comments:

RuralSandi said...

Curious - did Harper ever, ever do town hall meetings and really talk to the people and take all questions fired at him?

Steve V said...

NEVER. And, you'll remember the "man of the people" refused to do the CBC interview during the election, if he was forced to answer a PRE-TAPED question from a Canadian.