The rallies were a success, even if the Tory’s won’t admit it.

Posted on 25 January 2010

It was an amazing turnout in Toronto

Conservative spin drives me nuts. I absolutely hate it. But as much as I dislike what many Conservatives are saying about the “bad turn out” of the rallies this past weekend, I feel it is important to listen to their point. Why? Because on some level I can understand their arguments. Yes, compared to many historical rallies, compared to the number of people in the Facebook group, and moreover compared to the overall population of Canada, yes, the rallies were not attended by an insane number of people. It is certainly not unprecedented to get a few thousand people out to a rally. Period. What I disagree with was that these rallies were not a success, because they absolutely were.

Why were they a success? Just because this was not the largest rally known to Canada certainly does not mean it was not successful. We had an extremely large group on the streets showing our disappointment with Harper. We didn’t need hundreds of thousands of people in one place to prove that we have created a solid movement. We had a strong and concentrated effort across Canada to show our discontent with Stephen Harper. There were not just one or two rallies; there were more than 60 across the country. For the largest rallies, I have heard significantly different attendance numbers, but I can say from my own presence in Toronto there were definitely more than 3,000 people as many are claiming. I don’t know what the “official” numbers were, but if you were there I’m sure you agree with me. It was a huge and imposing crowd, and it was absolutely a success.

I really don’t care what the Conservatives who are spinning the rallies to be a failure are saying. To be honest, if they thought it was such a failure they would be simply ignoring that rallies even happened… instead they won’t stop telling us it was such a failure. That in of itself says something.

Lastly, this rally took place in January in Canada. We got thousands of people out on the streets. Canada is not warm in January. Enough said I think.

Also, we have a Facebook group with over 200,000 people across the country who are disappointed by the Prime Minister’s abuse of power. Yes, to the critics, it doesn’t take a lot of work to join a Facebook group – but here are the facts: there are now over 200,000 Canadians who are now informed about this anti-democratic situation, and are very likely passing off their discontent and knowledge to others. This was all done with little effort, and would have likely not happened without this Facebook group. Why? Because the younger generation often does not get their information from traditional forms of media such as news shows or newspapers, but they do from the internet, and specifically through forms of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. This is why the Facebook group has been a huge success. I will disagree with anyone who says otherwise.

This morning John Moore interviewed me on Newstalk 1010 about the protests and he did ask me one interesting question, which I will address once again on here. Essentially he asked me if Stephen Harper will care about these rallies. My honest answer to that is – no, he will not care. Not even one bit. This is not a Prime Minister who is willing to bend his agenda to the will of Canadians. His agenda is just that – his agenda, not that of the electorate. He will not change his plans because of a rally. On the other hand I do feel that these rallies have motivated the opposition and have started to change the electorate’s opinion on the Harper government – you can see it in the polling numbers. The Conservatives and the Liberals are in a dead heat now, which was not even close prior to Harper proroguing Parliament. We have a motivated opposition with significant momentum. This is very good for Canadian democracy.

In the end I feel Harper, the Conservatives, and their spin machine are running scared. These rallies were a huge success, and because of this they have to be out in full force ensuring people believe they were a failure when they clearly were not. Thousands of Canadians took to the streets in 60 different rallies across the country, and that made it a success. We have the Conservatives running scared… now is the time to capitalize.