Currently on a tour of northern Ontario, Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre is in Sault Ste. Marie today.
With a rally scheduled for 12:30 p.m. at The Machine Shop, the Official Opposition leader first visited the Tim Hortons location on John St., spoke with customers and heard their concerns, many of them eager to be photographed with him.
Poilievre said his Conservatives, if elected to power in the next federal vote, would form a government to help Canadians pay less tax and bring home bigger pay cheques.
Several challenges that people in Sault, northern Ontario and across Canada are facing are due to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government carbon tax, Poilievre said.
“We’re going to axe the carbon tax and inflationary deficits to bring home lower prices, lower income tax to bring home more powerful pay cheques that reward hard work,” Poilievre told SooToday.
Soaring food prices are among the concerns he has heard on his northern Ontario tour.
“Food prices are up by 20 per cent in two years. The carbon tax is a big part of the problem. If you tax the fuel of the farmer who produces the food and the trucker who ships the food you tax all those who buy the food. I would axe the tax so our farmers and truckers can bring more affordable food to our grocery stores and reduce the regulatory red tape on our farmers that drive up their production costs and get rid of the inflationary deficits,” Poilievre said.
Another concern he’s hearing from Saultites and Canadians nationwide is the need for affordable housing.
“I just met a 42-year-old carpenter here in the Sault with a full time job who is living in his car. It’s insane. I read a story about a middle-aged nurse living in a van. It’s mind boggling. Seniors are now living in parking lots. This is in Canada and it wasn’t like this eight years ago,” Poilievre said.
The Conservative leader said the solution is to get rid of deficits that drive up interest rates on mortgages and build more homes.
“We have the fewest homes per capita in the G7 even though we have the most land to build on. How is that possible? Government bureaucracy blocks housing construction which adds thousands of dollars to the cost of every home through permitting fees, taxes, lawyers, all of that adds up.”
“My plan is to incentivize cities to speed up and lower the cost of building permits while freeing up land to build on. I’ll support the building trades. We’re giving all of our education and training money to universities and professionals and I’ve got nothing against those occupations but we need more people to build and fix homes and we’re going to make more materials available for high schools to begin pre-apprenticeships for our youth before they even get their high school diploma.”
Canada’s health care system is currently facing a multitude of problems, including a shortage of family doctors.
Poilievre said his party has a solution for that.
“I would leverage the tens of billions of dollars in additional money that the feds are sending to health care to get more results. We have 20,000 immigrant doctors and 32,000 immigrant nurses banned from working in our system because there’s no direct way to approve their qualifications. In the States a nurse from the Philippines can take an international exam and get to work in a couple of weeks. In Canada she probably has to spend seven years on minimum wage fighting with the licensing body, doing paperwork, having her entire history examined.”
“We have a red seal exam for the trades. Why don’t we have a blue seal exam for the professions? Let the professionals take an exam, prove they’re qualified, get stamped with a blue seal and then they're licensed to practice anywhere in Canada. So I’ll use the federal health money and the federal immigration resettlement money to pressure the provinces to sign on to a blue seal testing standard.”
He added that if another pandemic should raise its head, a government led by him would not mandate vaccines.
“It would be a personal choice. That’s the way it should be. People should decide what to do with their own bodies.”
Poilievre said Justin Trudeau’s cabinet shuffle is a sign of a government in trouble.
“He fired seven ministers. That’s an admission his government is a disaster and he’s finally realizing how miserable life is in Canada. After eight years housing costs have doubled, food prices are up, crime is soaring and interest rates are at two-decade level highs and have risen faster than anytime in the history of the Bank of Canada.”
“You can blame seven ministers and fire them or you can blame the guy running the show. When the ship is sinking you don’t fire the crew, you fire the captain. He’s the captain. It’s time to fire Justin Trudeau.”
Poilievre planned to visit company officials and workers at Tenaris before his Machine Shop rally.
“The reaction I’m getting here is that people want to back up my plans. They know what’s going on because they’re living through it. It doesn't matter what spin the national media puts on for Trudeau. The reaction I’m getting is they want common sense back. This was a great country and they just want that back.”