Canada election: One-on-one with 3 federal leaders in battleground B.C.
Canada’s federal election is just days away, and the leaders are making their final push to connect with voters across the country.
British Columbia is shaping up to be a crucial battleground in the race, and unsurprisingly, the leaders of each of the three largest national parties have made multiple campaign stops in Canada’s Pacific province.
Global BC’s legislative reporter Richard Zussman had a chance to sit down one-on-one with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Liberal Leader Mark Carney and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh when they were in town. Here’s some of what they had to say.
Pierre PoilievreFor Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, the ballot question this election is about change. Do voters want to try a different approach, or do they want to stick with the Liberals, who, despite a new leader, Poilievre says are the same party Justin Trudeau led for a decade?
Poilievre, who spoke with Global News last weekend, prior to the launch of the Conservative platform, said one of the region’s perennial challenges, housing, encapsulates why voters are ready for something different in Ottawa.
“This Liberal housing crisis is the product of the last decade, where they ran money printing, inflation, and immigration out of control, boosting demand, and built up bureaucracies that blocked home building so that we couldn’t have supply — that’s how Liberals doubled housing costs and now, Mark Carney is doubling down on the same promises,” he said.
He pointed to Conservative promises to eliminate GST on homes valued under $1.3 million and to incentivize cities to slash development charges as a new path forward.
The Conservatives will also cap immigration, he said, to “ensure that we never add people faster than we add homes,” while targeting immigrants with skills in the building trades.
Polievre is also pitching change when it comes to resource development. He said he would scrap the federal Impact Assessment Act, which lays out the process to assess the environmental impacts of major projects, and which he called the “no development law.”
Poilievre said the law would “prevent us from ever building another LNG plant, another pipeline, another expansion to our ports,” and instead promised his government would turn permits around in six months and set up “shovel-ready zones” with pre-approved permits.
Poilievre said he rejects the idea that First Nations are an obstacle to such development, blaming “radical anti-development eco-extremists” for opposition to major oil and gas projects in B.C. like the Northern Gateway and Coastal GasLink pipelines.
“I want to sell our LNG overseas to break our dependence on Trump, leave the Americans in the dust on this, and take back control of our lives,” he said.
“As for those First Nations who don’t support it, I’m offering a more attractive deal. I’ll let the companies pay some of their federal tax to the local First Nations when projects go ahead, a major financial incentive to get to yes and to make First Nations people the richest in the world.”
Poilievre is also pitching a major shift on drugs and public safety.
The Conservatives, he said, would scrap bail provisions implemented under the Liberal government and implement a three-strikes law to keep offenders from getting bail. Three-strikes, he said, would also apply to violent offenders with penalties of a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life, and fentanyl traffickers would face mandatory life sentences.
The party would also direct the Crown to prosecute people for drug possession and end prescribed pharmaceutical alternatives for drug users, also known as “safe supply.”
Judges, he said, would have the option to sentence people caught with drugs to mandatory treatment.
“It’ll still be a criminal offence, but instead of just going to jail and doing drugs there, you’re going to go into a treatment center and become drug-free,” he said.
“Those who have more serious offences will go to jail, but in jail they’ll have mandatory treatment as well, and the only way they’ll get out is if they pass clean drug tests.”
Liberal Leader Mark Carney is pitching voters on a different ballot question: who is best suited to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump and his tariff and annexation threats.
It’s something the former central banker who helped guide Canada through the 2008 recession and the U.K. through Brexit argues he is uniquely qualified for.
“We have this fundamental challenge from the Americans. We’ve got to face up to Trump. We’ve got to win this trade war. We’ve got to negotiate the best deal. And we have to build,” he said.
“I’ve got the experience of managing crises. I have the experience to build an economy. I’m not a traditional politician.”
And while he is campaigning for a fourth Liberal term, he argued a Carney administration will also represent change — telling Global News his government would be “hugely different” from Justin Trudeau’s.
“We are fundamentally different people. We share the same values, but we have a different approach to achieving those values,” he said.
“I think that’s part of the reason we’re in, for example, the housing situation. Not enough focus on getting results, getting things done.”
Carney said his government would tackle the housing crisis by removing the GST on homes up to $1.5 million and pressuring cities to slash development charges by half.
His government would also focus on speeding up new supply, he said with a focus on technology like B.C. modular pre-fabricated homes.
“We’re going to have a step change because we’re getting the federal government to drive deeply affordable home building. We’re to help catalyze that industry, kickstart that industry,” he said.
Carney said his government would aim to be at the forefront of the clean energy transition, with a focus on building wind, solar, hydrogen and small modular nuclear reactors. At the same time, he said it would recognize the world still uses oil and gas and focus on delivering Canadian product with a lower carbon footprint.
“There is a way to get that carbon footprint down. One of our priorities is going to be to do that,” he said.
“That’s a huge advantage for Alberta, for Canada, for the global environment. It’s going to put us in a good position.”
A Liberal government would also speed up project approvals by leaning on provinces to do environmental assessments and bringing federal approvals into one office that makes decisions within two years.
On public safety, Carney touted the government’s recent changes to make it harder for some suspects to get bail, but said his government’s priority was tackling guns — something he argued the Conservatives won’t do.
He added that his government had already toughened the border with more personnel and surveillance.
But he said tackling Canada’s drug problem will require going after “root causes,” through new housing, youth mental health funding and partnerships with provincial governments.
Carney also sought to fend off attacks from the NDP, pledging his government would protect key social programs — including dental care, pharmacare, expanded $10 a day childcare and public health care.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has acknowledged that when all the ballots are cast, he won’t be in the Prime Minister’s Office.
And while some polls have shown Singh is facing a tough challenge in his own riding of Burnaby Central, the New Democrat leader told Global News he’s not thinking of his political future beyond the election at hand.
Voters, he said, have the chance to ensure New Democrats put their stamp on the next government’s policy, he said.
Singh argued neither Conservatives nor Liberals are focused on working people, saying both Poilievre and Carney will deliver billions in cuts if given a majority government.
“When we look at what Canadians are most proud of, the things they’re most proud of, universal healthcare, pensions, all day security, (are) all things that came about because people used their power and voted for New Democrats, sent us to Ottawa and we fought and delivered it,” he said.
Singh shook off suggestions that voters will associate him with Justin Trudeau, whose government he kept in power.
He said voters recognize that his party was able to help ensure the creation of major new social policies through its leverage over the Liberal minority government.
He said the NDP would not support a Conservative minority government, but could be prepared to work with the Liberals again to extract key policies.
“I’m the only leader that’s running right now that can actually confidently say that I fought and concretely made people’s lives more affordable by fighting for childcare and dental care and pharmacare, all measures that save people money,” he said.
He said the NDP would push for a price cap on food essentials, pointing to the way some jurisdictions regulate electricity, gas prices or rent.
“We’ve got corporate grocery stores that have jacked up the price of bread in the past, the price of meat, and more recently they’re jacking up the prices … of Canadian products, so we can’t let them,” he said.
The NDP would also push to ban corporations from buying up affordable rentals and homes as a solution to the rising cost of housing.
Amid a campaign filled with pipeline talk, Singh said his party’s priority for economic development would instead be an east-west electrical grid to lower the cost of electricity and a focus on mining critical minerals.
He added the NDP would approach the drug crisis “with compassion” by focusing on getting toxic drugs off the street and stopping them at the border.
He also appeared open to supporting controversial safe supply programs.
“Whatever it takes to keep someone alive is the only way that we can give them a fighting chance to beat the addiction if that’s what they have, or to give them the mental health supports they need, or to get them off the streets and into housing,” he said.
More than half of Singh’s last caucus, 13 MPs, hailed from British Columbia, and he maintained they remain the best option for voters who are concerned about splitting the vote.
“If you are worried about Conservatives, and a lot people are, the best way to stop a Conservative is to vote for your incumbent New Democrat, that’s the best to guarantee that you can beat a Conservative and to have someone that’s going to fight for you and defend what you care about,” he said.
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