Canadian Trudeau resumes the campaign after angry crowds interrupt rallies

OTTAWA, Aug 30 (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau relaunched his campaign on Monday after groups of unusually vocal and abusive protesters disrupted his weekend rallies, forcing him at a time to cancel an act.

Trudeau, whose ruling Liberals are in a neck race with their Conservative rivals ahead of the Sept. 20 vote, spoke Monday in the media in the city of Granby, Quebec, but did not refer to the riots in Cape Town. week.

In scenes rarely seen in Canada during federal campaigns, protesters in the cities of Bolton and Cambridge, Ontario, called death threats and called profane abuses Trudeau, many referring to the government’s push for people to were vaccinated against COVID-19.

Trudeau’s team made the unusual decision to cancel a planned nightly rally near Bolton on Friday, saying the protests could endanger public safety. His Sunday announcement of policies to combat climate change was partly drowned out by the crowd in Cambridge.

Trudeau, 49, is the son of former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who in the early 1980s was extremely unpopular in western Canada because of opposing policies by the energy industry, some provincial governments and many Western Canadians.

“I’ve never seen this intensity of anger in the countryside or in Canada, or when I was little, even with my father visiting the West, where we saw rage, certainly not in my last twelve years as a politician, he told reporters on Friday.

Trudeau’s insistence that all Canadians receive vaccines against COVID-19 has generated the same anger among right-wing groups as in the United States.

“I’m not going to back down on a message that Canadians know is the right path,” said Sunday Trudeau, who has ruled since 2015.

Conservatives denounced the images and behavior of the campaign as disgusting and demanded that they be stopped. That said, some of the people in the Bolton protest wore T-shirts that identified themselves as workers of a Conservative legislator.

Dan Robertson, head of strategy for Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, suggested the Liberals, who have a minority government that relies on opposition parties to pass legislation, could be looking to benefit from the protests.

“It’s not terribly difficult to do a tour again to avoid protesters (and) clashes, if you will,” he tweeted Monday.

Report by David Ljunggren Edited by Paul Simao

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