Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will address his caucus on Sunday to lay out priorities for the upcoming sitting of Parliament. They’ll likely include tackling affordability, unemployment, crime and immigration — issues the Tories argue the Liberals are failing to address.
A week ago, Poilievre posted on social media a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Mark Carney detailing the Conservatives’ plans for the fall and promising his party will “relentlessly hold your government to account because our citizens deserve better.”
“Our goal is to bring down costs, lock up criminals, hit the brakes on immigration, get shovels digging and deliver paycheques in pockets. We want a safe and affordable country like we had before this Liberal government,” the letter said.
Over the summer, Poilievre has sharpened his attacks on the government, culminating in his accusation last week that Carney had a “Seinfeld summer” and delivered no tangible results for Canadians — referring to the 1990s hit TV comedy Seinfeld, which has been described as “a show about nothing.”
My letter to Prime Minister Carney on the return of Parliament lays out the Conservative To-Do List:<br><br>1. Fix the Liberal cost-of-living crisis<br>2. Fix the Liberal job-loss crisis<br>3. Fix the Liberal crime crisis<br>4. Fix the Liberal immigration crisis<br><br>Our goal: Stronger take-home… <a href=”https://t.co/gk0ooD2BcO”>pic.twitter.com/gk0ooD2BcO</a>
The Conservatives have emphasized they would pass their Canadian Sovereignty Act, which repackages many of the party’s campaign promises, including scrapping the West Coast oil-tanker ban, killing the industrial emissions cap and eliminating the industrial carbon tax.
In his letter to Carney, Poilievre said the proposed legislation “would open our country for business…. So we make more at home and depend less on others.”
On Thursday, Carney announced the initial tranche of projects the federal government says it will help get off the ground quickly, including expanding liquefied natural gas production in British Columbia, upgrading the Port of Montreal and building a copper mine in Saskatchewan.
In a sit-down interview with CBC Radio’s The House on Friday, Poilievre panned the announcement and said Carney has “now been prime minister for six months — hard to believe — and he hasn’t delivered a permit for a single nation-building project.”
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Poilievre called on Ottawa earlier this summer to amend the Criminal Code so that use of force is presumed reasonable against a person who illegally enters a home and poses a threat to those inside.
In his letter, the Conservative leader said his party will hold the Liberals accountable for “a decade of reckless policies” that he argued have “left Canadians less safe and criminals less deterred.”
At a news conference in Vaughan, Ont., this week, Poilievre said his party will introduce the “Jail Not Bail Act” to respond to crime concerns. The bill’s sponsor, southwestern Ontario MP Arpan Khanna, drew the No. 10 position in the private member’s bill lottery, which means it’s likely to be debated sometime this fall. Most private member’s bills fail.
The legislation, if passed, will unwind parts of the last Liberal government’s Bill C-75, which introduced what’s called a “principle of restraint” requiring judges to release some people charged with a crime on bail at the “earliest reasonable opportunity” and with the “least onerous conditions.”
The Conservative leader has also said his party would axe the temporary foreign worker program and create a separate, stand-alone program for difficult-to-fill agricultural labour. According to Poilievre, the program has filled the market with cheap labour, shutting out young Canadians.
Poilievre says immigrants not to blame for Canada’s ‘too many, too fast’ immigration policies
Public polling suggests immigration, once an uncontroversial topic for Canadians, is now a salient issue. A survey from Nanos Research published this week found that nearly three-quarters of Canadian respondents now support reducing the number of new immigrants.
Abacus Data, another polling firm, has also been tracking the crumbling support. What was once a relatively marginal political issue has climbed up the list of national priorities. Nearly a third of voters surveyed this month said immigration is one of their top-three issues.
Carney said earlier this month that his government is reviewing the temporary foreign worker program. The prime minister also said that when he speaks to business leaders across Canada, their top issue is tariffs and their second is how to get more foreign workers.
“That program has a role, it has to be focused in terms of its role,” Carney said. “It’s part of what we will be discussing — how well the temporary foreign worker program is working and how our overall immigration system is working.”
