Huge crowd of volunteers attends Liberal candidate Allan Thompson
campaign launch in Kincardine
KINCARDINE (Sept. 4, 2019) — More than 100 people jammed into the campaign headquarters of Huron-Bruce Liberal candidate Allan Thompson on Wednesday evening for the official launch of Thompson’s campaign to be the next MP for Huron-Bruce.
Some people spilled out onto the porch to listen to Thompson’s speech on a loud speaker as he reached out to volunteers to join him in knocking on doors, to promise voters a stronger voice in Ottawa and to encourage them to support a government that will continue to move forward.
“We need to be out there in our community, talking to our neighbours, having conversations,” Thompson said.
“This started five years ago and there are people in this room who have continued to work, not just on my behalf, but in the interest of electing a progressive Liberal voice from Huron-Bruce,” said Thompson, who was the Liberal candidate in Huron-Bruce in the 2015 election and placed a close second.
“We cannot afford to go backwards in this country. We need to move forward,’’ he said.
“This can only happen if we get people involved at the grassroots. We should have people in the community, going out as a voice for the kind of movement we are part of.
“This is on, the election will begin in just a few days.”
The event was held at Team Thompson’s Bruce County office, which is located in a historic property at 343 Durham Market St. North, in Kincardine, across from Victoria Park. The Huron County office is located at 61 Hamilton St., in Goderich, just off the square.
Thompson was introduced at the event by Virginia Schenk, who is the co-chair of the Team Thompson campaign, along with former long-time Liberal MPP Murray Elston.
She said Thompson is continuing with the hard work he has been known for since the last campaign.
“He’s worked already tirelessly for this riding,” Schenk said. “I can’t really say where the first campaign ended and this campaign has begun because I honestly think he has just not stopped working throughout the whole time, the last four years. He’s been our voice already on Parliament Hill. It would be nice if we could all work together to make sure he is our official voice,” Schenk said.
Thompson said in his speech that voters will have to choose between the competing visions for the country offered by the leaders of the Liberal and Conservative parties.
“One of those visions is represented by Andrew Scheer and the Conservative party and from everything I have heard, what they are talking about is looking backward, going back to the Harper years, turning back the progress and some of the measures that the Trudeau government has been able to put in place,” Thompson said.
“We have to move forward and the new slogan for the campaign is Choose Forward. And that means working to continue things like the Canada Child Benefit, which has lifted more than 300,000 children out of poverty across this country, thousands of them here in Huron-Bruce. Continuing with progressive measures to lower taxes for the middle class, to have an actual strategy to confront what is arguably the most important issue of our time, which is climate change. That is the vision we are fighting for.”
And Thompson said he also wanted people to focus on the differences between Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer.
“I want you to think about the personalities of the leaders who are now competing to be the next Prime Minister of Canada,” he said.
“Think about Mr. Andrew Scheer. Now I know in some campaigns they say, ‘don’t even mention the name of your opponent.’ I think we should be reminding people who our opponent is. This is a choice between Andrew Scheer and Justin Trudeau.
“In the last few days Mr. Scheer has been saying ‘don’t dredge up these social issues from the past, I’ve addressed that.’ Well I’m sorry Andy, you have not. Canadians deserve to know what you believe, what you stand for. They don’t want some legalistic explanation ‘oh don’t worry about what I believe in, I won’t actually do that, I’ll respect the law of the land.
“In 2019 it is simply not good enough to even think about having a prime minister in this country who cannot stand up and just say straight up ‘I respect human rights, the dignity of all Canadians to be who they are, to love who they love, to live their lives.’ If you cannot stand up and say that, you do not deserve to be the prime minister of this country,’’ Thompson said, to a round of applause.
“We have to move forward with the kind of leadership, the kind of forthright leadership that Justin Trudeau provides,” he said.
“This man is acting on his beliefs, this is somebody who is taking what he believes in and wants to do something about, and that’s doing things that benefit people.
“We know the problems that are out there in our society, we’ve made a start in the last four years and now we want to continue that vision of caring about the average person and their daily needs and what government can do to make their lives better.
Thompson pledged to work as hard as he can to get elected and encouraged volunteers to join him.
“I will work harder; morning noon and night is the schedule. But I cannot do this alone,’’ Thompson said. “If you are here tonight and if you care enough to be here — and I appreciate your presence — I strongly encourage you to consider this to be the first of your volunteer shifts.
And he repeated that knocking on doors is as much about engaging with the community as it is with chasing votes.
“We need to knock on doors. It is Politics 101. That’s not just about gathering data and figuring out where the voters are — although that’s part of it. We need to be out there in our community, talking to our neighbours, having conversations. Be yourself and reach out to your friends and your neighbours and acquaintances and people you maybe don’t even know that well.”
Thompson encouraged volunteers to join those who are already out knocking on doors in the community as part of the campaign.
“It is remarkable what you learn about our community by knocking on doors. “
“You see incredible privilege and wealth, and you see people who are really living in abject poverty, or have incredible needs, people who are struggling with mental health issues and challenges and homelessness and lack of childcare.
“We need to reach out to those people and say, ‘you could have a voice in Ottawa, we could really try to work harder on the issues that matter to you.’
Thompson renewed his appeal to volunteers to join the movement.
“If I could get every person in this room to go out, for a couple of hours a week to knock on doors, we would absolutely win this election, no question, no doubt about it.”
He also asked for volunteers to work on phone banks, do shifts in the campaign offices or consider making a financial donation to the campaign if they have the means.
Thompson also took questions from the audience. One woman said she wanted to go to the election debates and ask the current MP why he has not attended Kincardine’s Pride parade for three years running.
“This was a real watershed for a rural community,” Thompson said, saluting Fort Papalia, the driving force behind Kincardine’s three successive Pride parades. “I’ve been honoured to participate in that event. Frankly I don’t know the answer to your question (about why the current MP doesn’t attend Pride events) I won’t speak for him because I don’t actually know why he won’t attend those events.”
Asked about the hardest question to deal with when going door to door, Thompson said some of the most difficult encounters are with people who are struggling to get by and grappling with the cost of living.
And asked about how he deals with politicians who use personal attacks and insults rather than putting forward ideas, Thompson said he is determined to remain positive.
“One of the things that attracted me to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party was this absolute determination to be positive — positive politics,” Thompson said. “We are not going negative. All that’s coming at us is negative, and we’re not going to go there.”
And he took issue with Andrew Scheer’s practise of posting misleading tweets and personal attacks again Justin Trudeau online.
“It is a problem when the leader of a national party engages in this kind of name-calling and personal insults in social media against your political opponent, that filters down, that sets the tone for other people,” he said.
“I think we just need to set the tone from the top down. Everyone has a right to be who they are in our society. And in rural communities, big changes are happening. There’s lots of transition in our small towns and our rural communities.
He recounted how those who organized the first Pride parade in Kincardine were a bit worried about what kind of reception they were going to get up on the main street.
“It’s such a tribute to Kincardine,’’ Thompson said. “I remember so vividly we got up to the main street and turned right and it was like a Santa Claus parade without Santa. There were hundreds if not thousands of people there, very warm, very positive, maybe some of them just a little curious what this was all about.
“That was a great example of how a small community like ours can make this transition and move forward. We can’t forget our past, we shouldn’t forget our past. But we sure as hell shouldn’t be living there. We cannot go back to the past and to the way things were in another time.”
Another person asked about climate change and how to respond to those who ask how the Liberal party justifies supporting pipelines while also fighting climate change.
“I’ve had this conversation with some of the people in this room, people who want to support me, that we’re not all going to agree on everything,’’ he said.
“The Trudeau government made a controversial decision, we will go forward with a pipeline like Transmountain. I agree with that. My view is we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can embark on this generation-long transition for us to move away from fossil fuels.
“As long as we can roll the benefits of a project like (Transmountain) back into efforts to move toward green technology and renewable energy.”
He also defended the Trudeau government’s policy of using a carbon tax to help combat climate change.
“When people ask me about the carbon tax, I say ‘listen, when’s the last time you threw a case of beer bottles in the garbage?’ Generations ago we decided we will put a tax on beer bottles, we will put a deposit of five cents, ten cents on your bottle to encourage people to do the right thing for the environment. This is about sustainability. We’re going to re-use those bottles 11 times. And you get the money back when you do the right thing. I tell people the carbon tax is essentially the same thing. For eight out of 10 people who are everyday users of fuel in their homes and in their vehicles, you will get more back from the carbon tax than you have paid out.
“It is a simple equation. Some people won’t be convinced, but every credible economist has pointed to the carbon tax as the single best way to encourage people to do the right thing.
Thompson was also asked about how he would represent people who live in rural communities.
“The first thing I did after the last election was go to (the Liberal party) to say we need a commission to study how we could be more effective in rural communities, how we could reach out to rural communities and make sure we’re reaching people we’re speaking to them and reflecting their voice. And they said go — do it.
“One of our recommendations was that the prime minister should go to the plowing match. I put a picture of a tractor in the report. The prime minister went to the plowing match here in Walton, in Huron County. It was the first time a prime minister had been to the plowing match in a decade or more. We’ve been heard. This government has created the post of Minister of Rural Economic Development. That is moving forward. The prime minister today in Bruce-Grey was talking to people in the business community about rural broadband. We are making progress, we have been heard on the rural file.
And he concluded by saying that he intends to make it his mission as an MP to remind decision makers to pay attention to the needs of people who live in rural communities.
“And my commitment is, when I get to Ottawa, I will continue to be a thorn in their side on issues that affect people who live in our small towns and our rural communities.”
