Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre blasted Prime Minister-designate Mark Carney during a Sunday rally with a larger crowd than those who turned up for the Liberal leadership convention.
Poilievre claimed that Carney would continue Trudeau’s policies, which have crippled Canada financially and led to widespread crime. The “Bring it Home” rally in London, Ont. had an estimated 2,500 attendees, while the Liberal party convention where Carney was selected as the next leader had less than 2,000.
Poilievre said Carney’s advice was to blame for Canada’s economic woes as he’s been advising Trudeau for years, including on the carbon tax.
“Carney’s advice drove up taxes, housing costs and food prices, while he personally profited from moving billions of dollars and thousands of jobs out of Canada to the United States,” Poilievre said. “Working for Trudeau, Carney made Canada weaker and poorer – working for himself, Carney made the United States richer and stronger.”
Poilievre claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump would have “a big smile on his face” exploiting Carney’s “many” conflicts of interest, leveraging the Prime Minister-designate’s financial interests against Canadians. He took shots at several talking points Carney had said over the last two months of his bid for the Liberal leadership.
He slammed Carney for saying that Canadians don’t have to worry about inflation but instead should be worried about deflation.
“His concern was that prices might actually go down. Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing? Maybe for him, the CEO of his company said inflation was good for Brookfield. Of course, it is. When billionaires see their assets inflate, they get richer,” Poilievre said. “Meanwhile, the working class sees the purchasing power of their paychecks go down. It’s a transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the have-yachts.”
Poilievre zeroed in on Carney’s recent comments, in which he called himself an elitist and a globalist, claiming that was what Canadian voters were looking for.
“This is the elite economics that Mark Carney has come to incarnate. He calls himself a globalist and an elitist, and he’s right about both of those things, but here in Canada, we’re going to protect the purchasing power of your money by getting rid of the money-printing deficits,” Poilievre pledged. “We will cut bureaucracy, consultants, corporate welfare and foreign aid to bring down deficits, taxes and inflation for you.”
He said that Carney will drop the carbon tax during the election, as he pledged to in his acceptance speech on Sunday, but will introduce a “shadow” industrial carbon tax.
Carney told a CTV journalist that the carbon tax would only be placed on big polluters and wouldn’t impact the average Canadian. Carney later walked back the comment, saying it would raise prices for consumers in areas such as the auto industry.
“All the steel makers in Canada will be out of Canada in no time, heading straight into the arms of Donald Trump if Mark Carney brings in a carbon tax on our industry,” Poilievre said.
He criticized Carney’s comments, saying that fentanyl was a “challenge” in Canada and not a crisis like it is in the U.S.
“Why would he care? He hasn’t been here for most of the time, and he obviously wouldn’t want to stand up to China, because that’s where many of his business interests are,” Poilievre said. “But if he doesn’t think that fentanyl is a crisis, then he needs to talk to the families of those 50,000 people.”
He said Conservatives would ban hard drugs and secure the border, including cracking down on fentanyl trafficking. He also said Liberals are focused on banning guns for legal firearm owners while Conservatives will focus on stopping illegal firearms from coming into the country.
“I want to stop criminals from harming Canadians. The Liberals want to stop hunters from harming turkeys. I think that’s the difference we’re dealing with here,” he said. “They’re always punishing the good people; the loyal and patriotic people who fight for this country are always put to the back of the bus. The hard-working, law-abiding Canadians who lay down their roots in this country, who fight for our nation, they get left behind, all for the benefit of a global elite.”
Poilievre claimed Carney was a hypocrite for fighting against new pipelines and introducing domestic carbon taxes while investing in Middle Eastern oil. While Carney has talked about replacing national currencies with a universal digital currency, Poilievre said he would not allow a central bank digital currency.
Poilievre also repeated his pledge to repeal Trudeau’s censorship laws and scrap Liberal bills allowing Canadians to speak freely – a pledge unmatched by Carney, who vowed to fight “the war on woke.”
Carney has avoided independent media inquiries even banning independent journalists from attending his events.