Conservative Party of Canada leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre made a stop in North Bay Sunday afternoon, wrapping up a weekend swing through the north.
The sitting Carleton MP (formerly the Nepean-Carleton riding) was given a rock-star greeting when he entered the Elks Club following his introduction by his wife Anaida in front of hundreds of party faithful who spilled out into the parking lot, along with the undecided who wanted to hear Poilievre’s take on a number of important issues.
Poilievre quoted Wilfred Laurier who defined Canada’s nationality this way; “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.”
The Conservative Party hopeful went on to say “Lately, we haven’t felt that free in this country.”
“Whether it is the 14-year-old girl suffering from depression after two years separated from sports and social activities, the single mother who lost her job because of a personal medical situation, or whether it is the small businessman who mortgaged his house to start up a restaurant only to have it close so many times he couldn’t afford to open it anymore. Or the hardworking trucker who delivered our goods and services across the border only to be called a criminal by our Prime Minister after praising our truckers for delivering our goods and services across borders without a vaccine, all of a sudden he said they were at risk of spreading the virus even though they are alone all day in a truck. So he kicked them out of their job and when they tried to raise their voices by peacefully protesting on parliament hill, Liberals like Trudeau and Charest called them criminals,” Poilievre gave as examples.
“Ladies and gentlemen our truckers just like everyone else have the freedom to stand up for their livelihoods and liberties and I was proud to stand there with them.”
“Furthermore, I will always stand up and fight back against these discriminatory and unfair vaccine mandates, and let's fight until they are all eliminated.”
The vaccine mandate issue was revisited roughly a half-hour later into his speech when a woman holding a sign shouted at Poilievre saying she lost her military job because she refused to get vaccinated, and wanted to know what he would do about it.
“I got upset because Pierre was talking about how he truly respects the soldiers and veterans and that got me upset because here I am with a sign saying that I am getting kicked out of the military because I am not following the order of getting vaccinated. If Trudeau really respected the active military, which I am part of, he wouldn’t have made this mandate mandatory and I am losing my job because of it,” explained the Canadian Forces employee who didn’t want to identify herself for fear it could land her in further trouble.
“I have not been allowed inside my building since November 15, 2021, because of the mandates. I kind of feel he brushed it off, but he did say he would talk to me later. He says he’s all for the truckers and everything, but he didn’t do anything. The mandates are still there, the mandates are still ongoing. I want people to start to take accountability, don’t just say what we want to hear. We’ve heard it enough. It was all fluff, there was nothing concrete,” she said in angry tones.
“I wanted to see how he would act and clearly, he brushed it off. I want him to say, ‘We messed up, we did something wrong, we shouldn’t have put this mandate in place, we’re going to fix it.’ That’s what I want. I want accountability from the government from the officials we elect. I want him to say if he is elected, he is going to reinstate my job. I’m not the only military member that is getting kicked out. This has affected my family, my future, my career, everything, everything.”
The pair did speak one on one after the event, and she said he was sympathetic, stating once again that he is against the mandate.
The Conservative leadership hopeful earlier told the crowd it is not just medical freedoms that have come under attack by the current government, it is economic freedoms as well.
“Six point seven per cent inflation means that six-point seven cents of your loonie vanished in one year alone. Its purchasing power goes down. In seven years since Trudeau took office, the buying power of your dollar for real estate has fallen by half because real estate prices have doubled”
He explained that there is a transfer of riches from the have-nots to the have-yachts.
“So what are we going to do about it? We’re going to restore common c-e-n-t-s. First of all, let’s get rid of the outrageous deficits that have necessitated all this money printing in the first place by balancing the budget. Trudeau has promised another 100 billion dollars of extra spending above and beyond the core services we already have. We can’t afford that, having already doubled our national debt to over a trillion dollars. I will cancel those 100 billion dollars. I will axe the multi-million dollar infrastructure bank. And I have another plan to save some tax dollars, we’re going to defund the CBC,” he said to thunderous applause from the crowd which boisterously chanted “defund the CBC.”
He noted inflation is hitting those already struggling to stay afloat.
“Whether you’re a single mother who is giving up meals so your kids don’t have to because food price inflation has priced four out of five families out of their diet. They’re having to cut back on the quantity and quality of the food they eat.”
On the issue of economics, Poilievre outlined how his government would get a handle on spending.
“We’re going to instill in government the same principle that you use in your household finances and that is, there is a fixed budget for things. If a family wants to build a deck, they might take a pass on the family vacation or, they get a deal on the lumber for the deck and maybe use a coupon to save money on a vacation and keep both of them within the fixed budget. It is this or that, not this and that.”
He wants politicians to have to choose to use scarce resources by passing something called the Pay as You Go Act.
“It works very simply. If the government wants to bring in another dollar of unbudgeted spending, it must first find a dollar of savings to pay for it. That would cap the cost of government while the taxpayer and the economy catch up. Let’s phase out the deficit and balance the budget. They brought in this law in the United States of America in the 1990s when they were broke and they managed to balance the budget in just a few years, ran a $400 billion surplus paying off much of their debt.”
The crowd heard as soon as Congress lapsed that law, and it went out of existence, they plowed back into a deficit again.
“It shows you need to impose discipline on government spending if you want to control the cost of the people. It is time for politicians to start pinching their pennies because taxpayers have been pinching their pennies long enough.”
“Instead of just creating more cash, we should start creating more of what cash buys. Build more homes, grow more food and generate more Canadian energy.”
”Why are we not producing? The answer is government gatekeepers,” calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “the worst gatekeeper of all, but there are many other gatekeepers who prevent us from producing the goods and services we need,” he added.
“House prices have doubled by $874,000 for every unit of housing. Now, why is that happening? We have the fewest houses per capita of any country in the G7 even though we have the most land to build on and the smallest population to build for. We should have cheap housing in this country. The point is we have lots of land to utilize,” he said.
“However governmental gatekeepers at the local level prevent construction. In Vancouver, $644,000 of the cost of an individual house is government regulation. That is the fees, the delays, the charges, the consultants, the lobbyists, and the lawyers who have to be hired just to get a building permit. In Toronto, it is about a quarter-million dollars. So this prevents builders from building.
Homeownership is unrealistic for many Canadians.
“If you are a working-class kid, an immigrant, or a young person, it becomes totally impossible to ever buy a home. So I am going to get the gatekeepers out of the way. The number one thing big-city mayors want? Money. Every time I meet with them they want more money. They’re not going to get what they want from my government until the people get what they want from their local government. So I’m going to make it clear, big-city mayors with overpriced real estate populations of over 500,000 will lose some of their infrastructure money unless they increase home building by 15 per cent every year, year after year supplying more houses for their people. Now there will also be a carrot. For every municipality in the country, I will take the money Trudeau set aside for housing and instead of shoveling it into municipal bureaucracies, I will set put a performance rule in place. For every extra house built in the local market, the municipal government will get $10,000 of new infrastructure dollars. So that means there will be an incentive to remove regulatory gatekeepers, let the builders build and supply our young people with millions of new homes to bring down the price.”
“Finally, we’re going to sell off 15 per cent of the 37,000 federal buildings that we have that were underutilized before COVID and now many are totally empty as people are working remotely. So we can free up that space for housing and use the proceeds of sale in order to pay off our deficit and I think that we can even get thousands of beautiful living residences in the former headquarters of CBC as well,” Poilievre told the crowd who responded with enthusiastic cheers and clapping.
“It’s not just the housing gatekeepers, it’s the energy gatekeepers as well preventing us from generating more energy. Here we are importing 130,000 barrels of overseas oil every single day to Canada from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. They take our money, we take their oil even though we have the third biggest supply of oil on planet earth. So here is what we’re going to do, we’re going to repeal Bill C-69 the no new pipelines law. Furthermore, we’re going to back up the Newfoundlanders, they have a plan to increase their oil production by 400-thousand barrels a day. A Poilievre government will approve that increase in Newfoundland’s oil production so that we can use it to fully displace all of the oil we’re bringing in from overseas.”
Poilievre says his government if elected would also speed up building permits for mines.
“So we can responsibly and in an environmentally friendly way, consult with our First Nations but get mines built so we can generate lithium, cobalt, graphite, for electric cars.”
In conclusion, the Conservative leadership hopeful answered the question many were wondering, “Why am I running for Prime Minister?”
“The answer is very simple and very direct. I am running for Prime Minister to put you back in control of your life by making Canada the freest nation on earth.”
He reminded the crowd he can’t do it without their support ”politics is not a spectator sport. You’ve learned over the past couple of years that if you don’t take an interest in politics, politics will take an interest in you. To put it more bluntly, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. So you’ve got to be at the table in a leadership race and that means having a membership. If you do not have a membership you can not vote in the coming leadership race.
And with that, he encouraged everyone present to get their membership now.
