Big voter turnout needed for Conservative victory, Poilievre tells hometown Calgary crowd

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre took his message of change Friday to Calgary, where his supporters will hope there's minimal change as Liberals push for multiple victories in the predominantly Conservative city.

Speaking to what organizers said was more than 3,000 people, he stressed the importance of ensuring all their friends and relatives vote in Monday's election.

"Are you going to reach out to all the people who may have given up on life and tell them that there's hope if they vote for a change?" Poilievre said.

"We need the biggest voter turnout in Canadian history to deliver the change that Canadians need."

It was a return for Polievre to a political stronghold — where nine of 10 seats went Conservative in 2021 — but also his personal homecoming.

Poilievre was born and went to high school and university in Calgary before launching his political career more than two decades ago in the Ottawa area.

Playing to his side's longstanding sense the governing Liberals didn't support the province and its oil-and-gas economy, he pledged Conservatives would "stand up" for the West. "Albertans, people of the prairies and all across the West deserve to be a fair and full part of our country, for a change," he said.

Those last three words repeatedly punctuated Poilievre's sentences, as he bids to end 10 years of federal Liberal rule and overcome what polls have shown as a narrow yet persistent lead for Mark Carney's party.

He used his rally venue, a private jet hangar near Calgary International Airport, to stage a dramatic entrance. The waiting crowd whooped with excitement as the hangar's giant doors opened and Poilievre's jet rolled slowly into view, bearing the leader's name in massive blue letters.

The plan made for a strikingly different backdrop than the large Canadian flag in front of which Poilievre has typically performed his stump speech.

The Conservatives billed Friday's afternoon event as a "whistle stop" or "mini-rally," with a slightly shorter speech than the nightly rallies he's held in large industrial warehouses or union halls around the country. But the Conservatives still pulled in a crowd that dwarfed the one that Carney attracted three weeks earlier.

Liberals have hopes to gain seats in Calgary, building on the one city MP they currently have. Polling aggregator 338 Canada suggests that four ridings here are either toss-ups or likely to go Liberal.

But the Conservatives have stressed a policy platform they believe will stoke billions of dollars of development in Alberta's oil and gas sector, by slashing various Liberal climate and energy regulations governing electric vehicles, energy project approvals and more.

"We know that energy is necessary — energy wealth, energy abundance," Poilievre said. "And that is why Conservatives will axe the entire carbon tax for everyone, for real, for a change."