The tour bus is parked outside the Artscape Wynchwood Barns as people steadily stream inside: parents with their young children, hordes of lip-pierced and dreadlocked young adults, even an elderly woman, who is shuffling along on her walker, are meandering their way to the stage.
The lights are bright, cameras are rolling and Sloan’s Believe in Me blares over the loudspeakers. The crowd cheers and the (rock) star himself makes his way the stage as a throng of photographers push up against him. When Jack Layton steps up to the podium, the steady chant erupts into full-blown roars of support for the NDP party leader.
Five days into the 41st election lead-up, the NDP is hosting one of the “biggest election rallies” in the party’s history on Tuesday (March 30), as touted on their website.
Here’s what it looked like:
In full rock show manner, the event started 40 minutes late with federal NDP Davenport riding candidate (and NOW columnist) Andrew Cash first up at the podium as MC. “Are we ready to send a Toronto NDP to Ottawa?” Cash shouts into the mic, receiving bellows of support. Liberal MP Mario Silva has helmed the Davenport riding since 2004.
Serving the interests of working-class Toronto families at the federal level becomes a strong theme of the night. Layton, who’s introduced by Parkdale-High Park NDP candidate Peggy Nash (of the self-described NDP “Cash/Nash team”), calls us a “world-class city” and pledges to “fight for the people who make this city great.”
A fresh-faced Layton emerges just hours after his appearance in Oshawa and he immediately lunges into his mandate that his NDPs are the only ones who can defeat the Harper Conservatives. He tells the crowd that “Ignatieff says the Liberals are the best you can do but I think you can do better.”
Layton is laying a smackdown on Conservatives across the board, including in Oshawa, where he says it’s “a two-way race” between the NDP and Conservative parties. He’s pitting high-profile union leader and NDP candidate Chris Buckley against Tory Colin Carrie, noting that the NDP placed second to the Conservatives in 2008, only losing by about 3,000 votes.
He then notes the splash of orange that surfaced in the otherwise all-blue Tory Alberta, with Linda Duncan winning the Edmonton-Strathcona riding in 2008. He’s also not shy about asking voters to vote strategically to defeat Harper, citing the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and parts of British Columbia, where the NDP has placed a strong second in Tory-elected ridings.
However, Layton was dealt an ego blow that same day when NDP candidate Ryan Dolby told a radio station that he was declaring his support for Liberal Graham Warwick in the Elgin-Middlesex-London riding, to ensure Tory Joe Preston wouldn’t snag the seat (again). A surprised Layton later responded that the party would slot another candidate in his place within 48 hours.
Earlier in the day in Oshawa, Layton unveiled his plan to reward job creators with a “job-creation tax” that will drop business tax rates (down from 11% to 9%) and provide $4,500 in tax credits to employers for new hires.
He also announced plans to extend the accelerated capital cost allowance for the next four years to allow more businesses to invest in machinery and equipment. He says he would restore corporate income taxes to 2008 levels, which have been dropping since 2000, and according to Layton, resulted in layoffs, jobs moving overseas and the steady replacement of full-time work to part-time work.
These announcements were made just after Layton pledged to cap interest rates and regulate transaction fees earlier on in the week.
“Do you trust Stephen Harper?” Layton asks the orange-tinted crowd. When they reply in a resounding, unified negative, Layton falls into a smirk. “I didn’t think so.”
“Harper helped out his friends during the recession,” he says, referring to the hefty tax breaks Harper offered to major corporations over the past five years. “Now it’s your turn.”
Layton then thanks crowd and walks offstage, disappearing into his entourage.
