GERALDTON, Ont. – Patty Hajdu says she will not be intimidated on the campaign trail.
Still, the Liberal candidate in Thunder Bay-Superior North and health minister said it was a bit unnerving after she and a campaign volunteer last Wednesday said they were swarmed by a group of People’s Party of Canada supporters in Geraldton, Ont.
A video, which appears to be shot by supporters of PPC candidate Rick Daines – who was not part of the small crowd – depicts a woman, who said she's not a PPC supporter, carrying a small child on her hip, confronting Hajdu and her volunteer outside of Daines’ campaign headquarters.
Calling the federal government a dictatorship, the woman, not wearing a mask and also not part of Daines' team, asked Hajdu to remove hers and later made reference to Nazi Germany, the Canadian economy and domestic violence, eventually starting a ‘Bring back Canada’ chant, telling Hajdu “your tyranny is not welcome here” and screaming “no new world order.”
A handful of PPC supporters are also in the video, most content to film the incident on their smart phone, occasionally agreeing or applauding unidentified woman's efforts.
Hajdu said she was also harassed in Longlac, Ont. earlier that day by another PPC supporter.
“He began to verbally harass me, very upset about the measures our government has taken to prevent the spread of illness and disease and used a number of defamatory words to describe me and encouraged other people driving down the street to yell at me … and tried to intimidate people who were coming up who maybe wanted to speak to me or grab my literature (and) interfere with their ability to speak with me.”
Daines, who confirmed two people in the crowd were part of his campaign team, but not the woman, who identified herself as being from Yukon, said Hajdu needs to learn to listen to people from all political backgrounds and hear what they have to say.
“I didn’t see anything disrespectful about the questions that were asked,” Daines said, reached by Zoom on Tuesday.
“There was a doctor asking medical questions from the federal health minister, who was also a member of Parliament. He asked her questions and she turned her back on him because of the colour of his shirt.”
Daines went on to say the Liberal Party and its candidates are trying to control the narrative and some members of the public simply won’t stand for it.
The PPC candidate wasn’t the only election hopeful to weigh in on the video.
The NDP’s Chantelle Bryson said behaviour like that exhibited in the video has no place in politics.
“The NDP and I do not tolerate any harassment from our supporters. No whisper campaigns, false news, in-person or online harassment of those with opposing views,” she posted to her Twitter feed.
“Rick Daines has a responsibility to put a stop to this kind of behaviour,” Bryson added, contacted by Dougall Media.
The Green Party’s Amanda Moddejonge said the direction politics is trending toward is the wrong one.
“Politics needs to stop being so divisive. We need to come together to work on Afghanistan, not this tomfoolery,” Moddejonge said.
Conservative Joshua Taylor chose not to comment, but did make it clear the protestors were not in any way associated with his campaign.
Hajdu said she plans to return to the area before the campaign ends, adding she received an apology from Greenstone Mayor Renald Beaulieu about the incident.
