Want to know if a party leader is coming to your town? It’s not easy

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They’re not exactly rock stars, but Canada’s party leaders are celebrities — of a sort. And for the next month, they’ll be on cross-country tours, trying to make themselves visible to voters who will be deciding on April 28 which one will be the prime minister.

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So how can you meet them, or at least see them in person? That can often be a heavy lift.

Akaash Maharaj, a Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, says security concerns explain, in part, the lack of information about leaders’ movements. But there are other factors.

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“They want to be seen in communities around Canada, but they don’t necessarily want to open the door or community members to assail them with questions and criticisms.” he said. “They often don’t announce these things publicly because they don’t want the public at large to attend out of the fear that critical voices might crowd out the adulating voices.”

The Liberal Party website  has what looks to be a useful, searchable list of upcoming events, filtered by province, postal code or individual riding. However, it tends to deliver feast or famine.

Give it a Toronto postal code and a search area of 100 kms and it will deliver scores of events — the vast majority of them looking for volunteers to knock on doors or canvass for candidates. Filter it to “national event” or “leader’s tour” and the page goes blank. That also happens if you search for events in Nepean, the riding where Carney is running.

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“There’s no public itinerary or anything like that,” a spokesperson for the Liberal Party told the National Post. “If Liberal supporters want to get the chance to meet the liberal leader, the best way to do it is to get involved with their local campaign. And that local campaign will keep them in touch with everything going on with central, and that local campaign will also find opportunities for them to meet the Liberal leader if and when the Liberal leader is in town.”

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre might seem like a difficult man to catch, at least from a media perspective. This month, the Conservative Party announced it would break with tradition by not allowing reporters on the leader’s planes or buses during the campaign.

That said, the party website does include a list of upcoming “Canada First” rallies with Poilievre in attendance. At press time, that included events in Surrey, B.C. (March 27), Winnipeg (March 29) and Fredericton (March 31). The page includes a link to register, and the slogan “Bring It Home.”

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That doesn’t include his campaign stops, however. Media outlets generally get information about appearances from a candidate’s press office just a day ahead of their arrival. So your best bet might be to Google “where are the party leaders today?”

For instance, on March 27 at 4 a.m. the Canadian Press released information on the leaders’ location for later that day. Liberal leader Mark Carney had suspended his campaign plans and was back in Ottawa after the U.S. announced auto tariffs.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was set to hold a press conference in Coquitlam, B.C., at 10:30 a.m. followed by his rally in Surrey at 6 p.m.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was to be in Windsor, Ont., for a 1 p.m. meeting with local Unifor auto leadership, followed by an announcement at 1:45 p.m. at a union hall on Turner Road. He was then scheduled to be at the local Stellantis plant during the 3 p.m. shift change.

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Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet had a busy day, speaking to media in Chambly, Que., at 10:10 a.m., followed by a visit to a local community centre, a meeting with representatives from the aerospace industry in Montreal at 1 p.m., and a press conference at 2:30 p.m. He also planned stops in St-Eustache and St-Jérôme later in the day.

And Green Party leaders Jonathan Pedneault and Elizabeth May were to attend a Rotary Club breakfast and a church service in Sidney, B.C., before heading to Camosun College in Victoria for a student awards ceremony from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. May then planned to campaign in nearby Sidney, while Pedneault headed for his riding of Outremont in Quebec.

Maharaj notes that when Carney kicked off his campaign in St. John’s, N.L., on Sunday, “there were several hundred fishermen protesting outside the venue where he made that announcement. They were protesting changes to snow crab quotas.”

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He added: “As a result of those protests, the staff of the fisheries minister were asked to stay away from the windows during that event, in their offices, for fear that they would be pelted with stones. These are times of great passion in politics. People are anxious and angry, so yes there are security considerations.”

In September, Singh was confronted by a group of protesters outside Parliament, one of whom called him “a corrupted bastard,” a remark that stopped him in his tracks and he turned to address the speaker.

Maharaj said that, security aside, fewer crowds can mean a greater control over the event and its impression on the public.

“Even in an age of social media, the traditional media retains, especially in Canada, a hold on the public imagination,” he said. “It can’t tell people what to think, but it often decides what people think about.”

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He continued: “These campaign stops are largely about trying to get that 15-second clip on the nightly news, trying to get a headline in tomorrow’s newspaper. Campaigns invest millions of dollars in these kinds of stops, and with that kind of investment and that kind of importance that are desperate to control the narrative.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the co-head of the smallest party seems to have the biggest online list of events. May, co-leader of the Green Party, has a page on her website that includes upcoming appearances at The Juno awards in Toronto (March 30), and two events in Saanich, B.C., on April 5 and 6. It even lists some post-election appearances.

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