Newly-nominated Langley federal Liberal candidate Rebecca Darnell began her campaign to unseat Conservative MP Mark Warawa with a “Rally in the Valley” on Thursday at Langley Events Centre.

She told a crowd of about 50 supporters that Warawa and his government declined the chance to contribute to the Events Centre.

“Mark Warawa said the government would give $5 million to the Events Centre, and that promise was broken,” she said. “This facility was built in spite of our government, not because of it.”

Both she and guest speaker Ujjal Dosanjh, MP for Vancouver South and a former B.C. premier, defended the Liberals’ decision to no longer support the minority Conservative government.

“The opposition is to hold the government accountable,’ she said. “If the legislation does not meet standards the Liberals have set, our job is to vote against it. That is also the job of the Bloc and the NDP.”

“We’re not forcing an election,” Diosanjh said. “We’re the Official Opposition. We are supposed to oppose the government. The NDP and Bloc can do whatever they want to, but we won’t support Stephen Harper.”

“Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party must do better, and that is reason enough to have another election,” Darnell said. “We need to do it sooner rather than later.”

“The Liberals will continue to hold the minority government accountable. We kept him (Harper) on life support for 10 months, and we won’t do so any longer,” she said.

Dosanjh said “The country has lost its way under Harper. It is diminished internationally.”

He also accused the Harper government of “picking and choosing” which people it treats as full-fledged citizens of this country.”

Dosanjh said he immigrated to Canada in 1968 and his hero then and now was Pierre Trudeau. When he said so publicly, while he was the NDP attorney-general of B.C. more than a decade ago, he was given a rough time by his fellow NDP MLAs, but he stuck to his guns.

“Trudeau is my favourite Canadian, because he wanted to build a just society. That’s the kind of Canada we want to build under Michael Ignatieff.”

He commented on how pleased he was to see a good crowd of Liberals in Langley.

“I am delighted to see this many Liberals in the heart of Conservative territory in Langley. I thought there might only be five, 10 or 20 people here.”

Dosanjh also stated that the current Conservative Party is a far cry from the Progressive Conservatives.

and the Brian Mulroney government.

“They’re not PCs. They’re Reform-Alliance. Mulroney was a social progressive as the prime minister of Canada. The PCs are entirely different from these Conservatives. They are not in the Canadian tradition.”

Among those on hand at the event were former Langley Liberal candidates Bill Brooks and Kim Richter. Brooks ran for the federal Liberals in the 2000 and 2006 elections, while Richter represented the party in the 2004 election.