Following a speech on his plan to address U.S.-Canada relations if elected, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre slammed his opponent for copying his policies.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney has faced criticism from opposition parties for plagiarizing Poilievre’s policies. When asked how Poilievre can distinguish his policies from Carney’s, he replied that the first difference is that Poilievre sincerely wants conservative policies while Carney does not.
“Mr. Carney opposed all of these policies for 10 years as part of a liberal government. I mean, look, he advised Trudeau to print money and run up huge deficits that drove inflation,” he said. “He opposes pipelines and energy production here in Canada, his policy on housing is the same as Trudeau building up monstrous bureaucracies in Ottawa.”
Another key difference Poilievre said was in his approach to crime and safety, something Carney has only mentioned addressing in platitudes.
“Mark Carney supports the entire radical action, release hug a thug, criminal justice policy that has turned our streets into war zones in many of our biggest cities,” Poilievre said. “He supports the distribution of tax funded drugs, and he continues to stand by the entire liberal agenda of the last decade.”
Poilievre has vowed to repeal laws such as Bill C-5 and C-75, which removed mandatory minimum sentencing and made courts prioritize giving bail, even to repeat offenders. He also has pledged to give life sentences to serial drug dealers, human traffickers and gun smugglers.
“If you want to know what the Liberals will do with a fourth term, look what they did for the last 10 years. If you want to know what I’ll do, look what I’ve been saying for the last 10 years. It hasn’t changed,” Poilievre said. “I have said exactly the same thing for the last 10 years. And it turns out that the things we must do to counter Donald Trump are all the things I said we should be doing before he even threatened the tariffs.”
Poilievre claimed Carney’s housing plan was just an extension of Trudeau’s and dissimilar to his own which is to “lock up criminals” and “secure” Canadian streets.
“His latest is a $35 billion government construction company which is going to build prefab, tiny homes with no driveways,” he said. “What could possibly go wrong? Building up housing bureaucracies in Ottawa has doubled housing costs during the Lost liberal decade, and giving Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney a fourth term will only make it worse.”
Poilievre’s plan to rapidly build more housing focuses on lifting taxes and regulatory burdens so housing developers can start building and investing in construction projects and the government can “get out of the way.”
“We need to take taxes off new homes so that we can employ our trades workers in a field that doesn’t require the Americans, that is to say, building homes on our own soil,” he said.
He said his government would repeal the no new-pipelines act, Bill C-69, a law which Carney said his government would not remove despite claiming his government would build more pipelines like Poilievre proposed.
Poilievre also pledged to remove capital gains taxes on investments in Canada.
“In essence, what we need after a lost liberal decade is not a fourth term,” he said. “We need a new government that will put Canada first for a change.”
During his speech, Poilievre took shots at Carney for being supported by Trump and prematurely predicted the winner of the election by the U.S. president.
“Donald Trump knows that a fourth Liberal term under Mark Carney would mean an even weaker and poorer Canada that continues to be dependent on American markets and vulnerable to his threats,” Poilievre said. “He knows that Mark Carney is opposed to making Canada an economic superpower. He knows that the Liberal agenda of blocking energy production and pipeline construction will keep us under his thumb.”
He noted that Carney once said in a speech at the World Economic Forum that 80 per cent of current fossil fuel revers would need to “stay in the ground.”
“Trump knows that Mark Carney will keep Justin Trudeau’s industrial carbon tax on Canadian industry as well as Trudeau’s cap on Canadian energy, driving business south,” Poilievre said. “When you consider that Mark Carney’s ”keep-it-in-ground’ agenda will make our economy even more dependent on the United States, it becomes very clear why Trump wants the Liberals to get a fourth term.”
Poilievre said Trump wants Carney as prime minister because he knows Carney will hold Canada back from becoming an “economic and resource powerhouse.”
“I have spent the first week of this campaign setting out my ambitious and detailed plan to build our economy so we can stand on our own feet and stand up to President Trump from a position of strength,” Poilievre said. “It is everything we should have been doing for the last ten years, and everything the Liberals have opposed and that, under Mark Carney, they continue to oppose.”