Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre at a packed campaign event in Edmonton, which is believed to be one of his biggest rallies yet.
During an exchange with a reporter from the Globe and Mail, Poilievre asked whether she enjoyed his rally in Edmonton last night — not the first time he’s asked a journalist that question.
The reporter said she wanted to ask him about the rally, and “whether size matters.” That got a big laugh from the Conservative leader.
There’s been something of an emphasis on rally sizes during this stretch of the campaign — and with that, concerns that focusing too much on a leader’s ability to draw a crowd brings up comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has famously fixated on the number of attendees to his rallies and inaugurations.
The Globe reporter asked Poilievre whether his crowd-pleasers at rallies — talking about the “woke mob,” the Century Initiative, and his wish to defund the CBC — are broadening his support to Liberals and undecided voters, or whether it shows that his rallies exist in an “echo chamber.”
Poilievre said he thinks those ideas have broadened his support, then asked the reporter how many people she thinks attended the rally, and whether she’d ever been to one that big.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to a political rally that big, I think,” she said. She noted that his campaign said the rally drew at least 10,000 people.
Poilievre seized on the moment. “To have 10 or 15,000 people at one rally — this is a movement like we’ve never seen, because people want change,” he said. “They want to put our country first for a change.”