Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Monday his party will release its costed platform on Tuesday, giving voters a sense of what a government led by him would do and where it would cut to pay for it all.
The platform release comes the day after advance polls close and less than a week before election day.
Poilievre is the last major party leader to release his plan after Liberal Leader Mark Carney and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh launched theirs over the weekend.
Asked Monday why the party has waited to release the document with so little time left in the campaign, and if it’s related to trouble sorting out some of the math for what’s expected to be an ambitious agenda, Poilievre said the timing has nothing to do with accounting.
Poilievre has long promised to enact a “pay-as-you go” or “dollar for dollar” law on his watch, which would demand every dollar of new government spending be matched with a cut to spending elsewhere.
Poilievre is pitching some big-ticket items that will have to be paid for by cuts to other programs — or a sizable increase in revenue on the other side of the ledger.
The Conservative leader says his plan to fast-track natural resources development by slashing red tape will generate tens of billions of dollars in government revenue to help pay for new measures, making deep cuts unnecessary.
WATCH: Poilievre slams Liberal platform, promises to ‘axe the inflation tax’
Poilievre slams Liberal platform, promises to ‘axe the inflation tax’
Still, Poilievre is promising a $14-billion a year “middle-class tax cut,” which is more generous and therefore more costly than what Carney is pitching.
He’s also promising to scrap the GST on all new homes, which will cost the federal treasury some $1.56 billion a year in lost revenue — a measure that is again more expensive than Carney’s promise to scrap the GST for first-time homebuyers only.
Poilievre is also promising to get defence spending up to the NATO target of two per cent of GDP by 2030 — a multi-billion-dollar commitment.
He has also vowed to defer the capital gains tax if an investor takes the proceeds of a gain and reinvests them in Canada, a roughly $5-billion spending commitment for each of the next two years.
Poilievre said his platform will detail where he plans to slash government spending to give him the funds to deploy money elsewhere, promising “a truly costed platform that will cut waste, axe taxes, unleash home building, lock up criminals and bring home the country we love.”
The Liberals say Poilievre’s “dollar for dollar” commitment means the Conservatives will need to make major cuts to pay for what they say is $140 billion in new spending announced over the course of the campaign so far.
“The Conservatives’ real plan is to make cuts. What will he cut to match those commitments, who will be left vulnerable, and how much will these cuts weaken Canada’s economy? It’s time Pierre Poilievre stopped hiding and came clean about his divisive cuts,” Liberal candidate François-Philippe Champagne said in a statement.
The Liberals say Poilievre will need to slash dental care, pharmacare, child care, the national school program and “much more” to meet his spending commitments.
Poilievre has been vague about what exactly he would do with some of these relatively new Liberal social programs, but he has said he will at least keep dental care for those who already have it, and will “protect” child care.
Poilievre said Monday the Liberal charge that massive cuts are coming is bogus.
“Whenever Liberals present you with the numbers, you should be afraid, very afraid, because their numbers are always wrong,” Poilievre said.
Poilievre said he’s already laid out “a lot of savings” that will come with a Conservative government to help pay for new commitments. On Sunday, Poilievre said he cut spending on outside consultants by $10 billion.
It’s difficult to determine just how much the government currently spends on consultants and outside advice as it’s not a single line item in the budget. Regardless, Poilievre has said he can find major savings.
Poilievre also touted Monday a plan to get rid of “Liberal programs that give out free drugs,” an apparent reference to the government’s so-called “safer supply” program that gives prescriptions to people who are addicted to drugs and at risk of an overdose. That’s a relatively small budget item.
Poilievre also said Monday he’d do away with the government’s “wasteful” gun buyback program, which according to an analysis from the parliamentary budget officer will cost at least $756 million, plus administration — a figure that has likely increased since that report was first drafted in 2021, due to inflation and the addition of more than 800 firearms to the banned list.
A Conservative government will also “cut bureaucracy, foreign aid handouts to corporate insiders and other waste,” Poilievre said. He has also promised to defund the CBC and target funds held in tax havens.
And if those cuts don’t fill the gap, Poilievre said he has a plan to address a potential shortfall: He’s going to turbocharge natural resources extraction by eliminating what he calls anti-development laws, which will deliver new revenue to the federal government.
“It will create a massive boom, enriching provinces in Canada and generating $70 billion of additional revenue to finance our various programs,” Poilievre told reporters, saying that figure was calculated by an “independent economist” and validated by “the former chief economic analyst of Statistics Canada.”
“We will unlock the power of our resource sector and stimulate economic growth,” he said.
Carney is also promising to stimulate strong economic growth to help fill the government’s coffers, but he didn’t factor in that hypothetical windfall when crafting his own platform, which also calls for tens of billions of dollars of more spending that Poilievre has condemned as “shocking.”
“As crazy and costly as Trudeau’s budget plan already was, Mark Carney’s is even worse,” Poilievre said.
