OTTAWA — In a campaign-style speech in the House of Commons, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made his case to topple the Liberal government in a vote to be held Wednesday, vowing that once he wins power, he will balance the federal budget “as soon as possible.”
Poilievre, who has said he would also cut income taxes, pledged Tuesday that he will bring in “lower, fairer, simpler taxes” across the board, adding, “We will cap government spending with a dollar-for-dollar law that requires we find one dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending. We will cut bureaucracy, waste and consulting contracts, so that we can get the budget close or, hopefully, on balance as soon as possible to bring down interest rates, inflation and debt.”
While Poilievre has long claimed he would “fix the budget,” he has not set out a timeline for balancing it.
Ottawa is currently projecting a deficit of nearly $40 billion this year, dropping to $20 billion five years out. Poilievre did not specify where he would cut government costs during a sometimes heated debate in the Commons.
His political rivals piled on the Conservative leader, who is leading by a wide margin in public opinion polls, warning he plans to make drastic cuts to programs like health care, pharmacare and dental care.
But Poilievre urged the Bloc Québécois and New Democratic Party to support the Conservative motion of non-confidence in the Trudeau Liberals, saying there is an “existential choice” to be made for the Canadian economy.
“This will be a carbon-tax referendum and a carbon-tax election,” said Poilievre, who doubled down on his claim that scheduled increases in the consumer carbon fuel charge will cause “nuclear winter” to the Canadian economy.
Without reference to the corresponding rise in carbon rebate payments, Poilievre said the carbon price scheme will “grind our economy to a halt, that would force our truckers to leave to the U.S. where there is no carbon tax, leaving nobody to bring goods to our grocery store, parts to our factories or jobs to our people. It will be a nuclear winter if this happens.”
Yet the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois said their MPs will not support the Conservatives’ bid to trigger an immediate election. The BQ argued it will trade its support for “gains” for Quebec and is not yet willing to swap Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for Poilievre, whose plan for program cuts are unclear.
There will be plenty of other chances to bring down the Liberals in the next three months if they don’t choose to work with the Bloc, said BQ House leader Alain Therrien. The BQ, NDP and the Conservatives will have several other opportunities to set the parliamentary agenda and present non-confidence motions, he noted.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh attacked Poilievre as a threat to universal health care, accusing the Conservatives of supporting a bigger role for the private sector in health-care delivery because of corporate ties. He asked Poilievre directly if he would cut dental care, and Poilievre turned the tables on the NDP leader, saying his desire for a “single-payer” pharmacare plan puts at risk the private insurance plans of ordinary workers that were hard-won by unions.
While Poilievre was presenting his motion in the House, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson staged a news conference outside to excoriate the Conservative leader over his opposition to the Liberals’ signature climate policy.
Guilbeault said gutting the federal carbon pricing requirement would benefit wealthy fossil fuel companies while removing the rebates for households where the made-in-Ottawa consumer system applies. This year, a family of four in Ontario is set to receive more than $1,100 in rebates under that plan.
Wilkinson said eliminating those rebates along with the federal consumer carbon price would be akin to taking money away from lower-income Canadians. The independent Parliamentary Budget Office has calculated that lower-income households see a larger fiscal benefit from the system than wealthier ones.
The ministers also zeroed in on Poilievre’s recent statements that increasing the federal carbon price to $170 per tonne of emissions by 2030, as the Liberals plan to do, would be akin to a “nuclear winter” for the economy.
Experts on the science of nuclear war have projected that a real nuclear winter would kill billions of people around the world, and possibly cause almost the entire Canadian population to starve to death.
“I would say some of the more recent colourful language that he has been using around things like nuclear winter are simply ridiculous, and not becoming of a leader in a major G7 country,” Wilkinson said.
“They are stupid, and he should know that.”
