Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a brief appearance in North Battleford, Sask., in an effort to drum up support for a local Liberal candidate in an upcoming byelection.
The prairie city was among Trudeau’s first stops after spending most of the week in China, where he unsuccessfully sought a trade deal with the powerhouse nation.
“This is a really important opportunity to come together as a community to reflect on the future we’re going to build,” Trudeau told a crowd of supporters at a photo opportunity without media interviews.
Liberal candidate Larry Ingram is seeking the vacant seat of Battlefords-Lloydminster, as is Conservative Rosemarie Falk, the NDP’s Matt Fedler, independent Ken Finlayson, and Yvonne Potter-Pihach of the Green Party.
The seat has been up for grabs since former agriculture minister Gerry Ritz announced his resignation in late August — ending his 20 years in federal politics.
In the 2015 federal election, 61 per cent of people who voted in Battlefords-Lloydminster cast ballots for the Conservatives. The Liberals and NDP both failed to eclipse 20 per cent.
As he urged supporters to vote, Trudeau acknowledged notoriously low turnouts in byelections.
“Byelections are a challenging thing. It’s hard to get people to even notice sometimes that there’s a byelection going on,” Trudeau said.
The Battlefords-Lloydminster byelection is scheduled for Monday, Dec. 11.
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