Two hours after sunrise on Easter Sunday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made a campaign stop at a grocery store in Surrey, B.C., to criticize the price tag of the Liberals’ election platform, which would cost Canadian taxpayers $130 billion in spending.
“Mark Carney is worse than Justin Trudeau,” said Poilievre, standing in the produce aisle of a Fruiticana store to make the case that Carney’s new promises added on top of former Prime Minister Trudeau’s planned deficits would amount to crippling debt that would drive up the cost of living.
“A fourth Liberal government would bring in a quarter of a trillion of additional debt. That’s inflationary debt that will drive up the cost of food, housing and everything else you buy,” Poilievre added, as he referenced the pile of onions in front of him as an example.
“It’s clear the Liberals do not deserve a fourth term. It’s time to put Canada first for a change.”
That provided the preamble to the Sunday announcement that a Poilievre-led government would slash federal government consultant fees by $10 billion.
Although the Conservatives have released 95 per cent of their platform, which includes $14 billion in tax cuts, removing the GST on new homes, and committing to billions of dollars in defence spending to bolster Arctic security, they have not shown how they will pay for their promises, leaving voters without the ability to compare how their priorities stack up against other parties.
The Liberals, the NDP, and the Green Party have released the cost of their platforms. After the leaders’ debate, Poilievre said the price of his promises would be disclosed within days.
He has not delivered, and that, to Lori Williams of Mount Royal University, is a possible “opportunity lost” to persuade undecided voters.
“We don’t have an answer about what fiscal management would look like if it were under Mr. Poilievre as prime minister,” said Williams, a political science professor.
“We don’t even know who Pierre Poilievre’s finance minister would be or who would be in his cabinet.”
With a week until the election, Williams says it’s likely most voters have already made up their minds, but for those considering the Conservatives, the lack of a costed platform may lead them to look elsewhere.
“If people are looking closer at the alternatives presented by Mr. Poilievre, they’re not getting their questions answered.”
Battleground B.C.
Of the 42 seats in British Columbia, more than half are located in the Greater Vancouver area. The entire lower mainland is a battleground that has gone red, blue, and orange. These are ridings with high immigrant populations from China and India, both of which have been at the centre of foreign interference allegations.
In the 2021 election, Conservative candidate Kenny Chiu was targeted by a smear campaign launched on the Chinese app WeChat aimed at electing his successor. A public inquiry found that Chiu may have lost his seat because of election meddling.
Then in 2023, Sikh-Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who advocated for a separate state of Khalistan, was shot dead. Trudeau would later link the assassination to gang members associated with the Indian government.
Unlike previous campaign stops, the Conservatives did not hold a big rally in the Vancouver region, choosing instead smaller, targeted photo opportunities.
Chinese-language media was invited to ask questions on two separate occasions at announcements on the weekend. On Saturday, Poilievre shook hands with people in the crowds of the Vaisakhi celebration. Organizers said the spring Sikh festival attracted more than half a million people this year.
Then on Sunday, Poilievre and his wife, Anaida, visited a family in Langley, B.C., where they decorated Easter eggs. At the end of the visit, the family prayed for the couple.
The Conservative events differed from what Mark Carney was doing in his Ontario riding of Nepean.
“The Conservative leader doesn’t like our plan to stand up to President Trump,” Carney said to dozens of people who had gathered..
“(Poilievre) doesn’t have a plan—we’re waiting. We’re waiting,” Carney said mockingly to laughter and applause during the afternoon rally.
Former NDP leader and CTV analyst Tom Mulcair says the release of the Liberal platform and its $130 billion spending commitments was expertly timed to insulate Carney.
“It wasn’t an accident they released it on an Easter weekend. It was a way to bury it. It won’t be on the front page, because there aren’t a lot of front pages on Easter Monday,” said Mulcair, who called the timing decision “clever politics.”
After a weekend in B.C., Poilievre’s campaign now shifts east towards the vote-rich ridings of the Greater Toronto Area. Those constituencies can flip between Liberals and Conservatives, and winning them could be the difference between a minority or a majority government.
Correction
A previous version of this story had wrongly reported that people had gathered outside Carney’s campaign office in Nepean. The gathering was in Nepean, but not outside the campaign office.
