The following is a transcript of the remarks delivered by Pierre Poilievre, Conservative Leader, on May 13th, 2025. Check against delivery.
Ottawa, ON – I’d like to begin today in English by congratulating the new ministers for their roles. It’s literally a one-in-a-million opportunity. I think they have 40 ministers in total, and there’s about 41 million people, so it’s literally one in a million to be a minister and a big accomplishment to get to that place.
The Conservatives will take our role of holding the government accountable seriously. That doesn’t mean we reflexively oppose everything the government does. When it comes, for example, to foreign affairs, if the government does a good job at defending our national interest in negotiations with the U.S., then we will support those efforts, and when they’re right, we’ll stand with them. When they’re wrong, we will oppose them.
We hope the country succeeds. We want the nation to do well. We ran on the promise of bringing home Canada’s promise, a very simple deal that Canada used to provide, which is that anyone who works hard gets a great life, in an affordable home, on a safe street, under our proud flag. That means boosting the buying power of our workers and seniors by cutting wasteful spending and bureaucracy to bring down taxes and inflation. It means freeing workers and businesses to build more affordable homes and develop resources. It means unleashing investment by cutting and simplifying taxes. It means protecting our streets with stronger laws and borders.
Canadians cannot afford more high-spending, high-taxing, overregulating, out-of-touch, Liberal policies that have priced young people out of homes, inflicted crime waves on our communities, driven 2 million people to the food bank and made life unbearable for too many hardworking and decent people. In his first press conference, Mr. Carney talked a good game about reversing Liberal policies in these areas, but now we have to find out if he was serious, and so far, it’s not a promising start.
The first disappointment is, unfortunately, his cabinet. He appointed Trudeau’s old team and Trudeau’s old advisors.
Steven Guilbeault, whose radical green agenda would shut down all future developments in our resource industry, is still the minister responsible for Quebec.
Sean Fraser was the immigration minister who caused the immigration crisis, the housing minister who gave us the housing crisis, and now he’s the minister responsible for addressing the Liberal crime crisis. It seems like he is the master at failing upward.
Chrystia Freeland, who as finance minister hiked capital gains tax and carbon taxes and massively grew our debt to the point where we now spend a billion dollars a week on interest, stays in the cabinet.
Then there’s Gary Anandasangaree, the new Minister of Public Safety, who said “the actual crimes, the actual issues around bail are quite sound and they are embedded and codified in law right now,” as if to say that there’s nothing wrong with the system. Well, in fact, there’s everything wrong as we see from the growing crime wave on our streets.
Then there’s Francois Philippe Champagne, Trudeau’s minister of everything who never really managed to do anything. I’ll give him credit, he’s a nice guy, but he was the minister of industry during which we had the worst economic growth of any country in the G7, and now he’s in charge of the budget.
Then there’s Joly, LeBlanc, Hajdu, Anand. Anand was the president of the Treasury Board during which time the bureaucracy and the consultant bills blew out of control. In all, 14 Trudeau ministers are now in Carney’s cabinet. It’s more of the same when Canada needs real change.
Even the new additions are problematic. Gregor Robertson was the mayor of Vancouver who pushed for total legalization of hard drugs, distribution of tax-funded opioids. During his time there, there was a 600% increase in overdoses. Now he’s the housing minister. Well, what’s his record on housing? Well, he increased housing taxes in Vancouver by 141%, and the result was that housing costs went up by 149%, more than doubling the cost and giving Vancouver, his city, the most expensive housing prices in all of North America.
Now, Mr. Carney puts this gentleman in charge of housing. If this is the new blood that Mr. Carney is bringing into the cabinet, then sadly for Canadians, nothing is going to change, and the role of the Conservative Party will be more important than ever.
Conservatives will continue to push real solutions. We’ll put forward constructive ideas to reverse the housing crisis, make food affordable and grow our paychecks. And these sorts of things cannot be solved with more bureaucracy and Liberal laws. We need common sense results, and that’s why Conservatives will continue to push for less spending, less taxes, less inflation to lock up criminals, remove bureaucracy, speed up home building and resource production.
We need to put forward real solutions on crime, for example, to toughen up penalties for repeat violent offenders and end the revolving door of broken bail. We will also demand the government actually impose a real cap on immigration so that we can stop the uncontrolled population growth that has put too much pressure on our housing, job and healthcare systems. Finally, and most importantly, the only way we get out of this deep economic trouble the Liberals have got us into is by unleashing economic growth. And that means repealing anti-development laws C-69, the energy cap, the industrial carbon tax, the offshore shipping ban, all of these things need to be reversed so that we can unleash the incredible power of our resources.
We need a pro-growth free enterprise agenda to take us from the worst in the G7 to the best in the G7. We should be the richest country in the world with our resources and our brilliant people, and Conservatives will continue to propose real solutions to make that happen. It’s our constitutional duty to hold the government to account, and we will do that.
We’ll give a voice to all the voiceless. Those who’ve been cast aside, ignored, kicked to the curb. The decent, honourable people whose lives have been turned upside down in the last decade, that feel like they’ve until recently, that they’ve had no voice. They’ve asked me to continue to fight for them, and Conservatives are going to be their voice on the floor of the House of Commons. We’re proud that we brought together the biggest coalition of Conservatives in history that will all work. We want to make sure that every single person who vested their hopes in us sees us fighting for them every day, even though the final result did not go how we wanted.
We want to see dramatic changes, not soft reassurances, and we also have an offer to make to the Liberals: my message to Mr. Carney, steal my ideas. We’ve got great ideas, and when leading the charge on the debate over carbon taxes, inflation, housing prices, crime, drugs, resource development, and I note the Liberals even lifted a few of those ideas and put them in their platform to get re-elected.
We want to make sure that they were sincere about that, and we’re going to continue to put forward solid ideas to make people’s lives better every day because our purpose is to bring home the promise of Canada that everyone who works hard gets a great life. That anyone from anywhere can do anything. Where you get a nice, affordable home on a safe street. Every day and in every way, we will fight for our people and our country to put people back in charge of their lives with bigger paychecks, abundant, affordable energy, home ownership, low taxes, safe streets, and a strong military in the country that we know and love: Canada. Thank you.