Poilievre to release platform Tuesday with details on new spending and cuts
CBC
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.
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.
Poilievre's housing agenda is perhaps the next-largest financial commitment. He's promising to scrap the GST on all new homes, which the party says would cost the federal treasury between $3.96 billion and $4.97 billion a year in lost revenue — although some of that would be offset with other revenue generated by more home construction — a measure that is again more expensive than Carney's promise to scrap the GST for first-time homebuyers only.
And at an announcement in Toronto's Scarborough district on Monday, Poilievre committed to building 2.3 million new homes nationwide over the next five years. He said he would fulfil that pledge by rewarding cities that cut development charges with federal funding to make up for some of the lost revenue — a program that would cost $1.56 billion per year.
Poilievre is also promising to get defence spending up to the NATO target of two per cent of GDP by 2030 — a multibillion-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.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will take to the stage Friday for what could be one of the most important speeches of his political career as he tries to convince delegates at the party's Calgary convention to keep him in the job.
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