Ottawa, ON – At the beginning of the session, the Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition issued a call to action to the Prime Minister: Steal my ideas. True to form, the Carney Liberals stole the words but skipped the substance, leaving Canadians with more debt, more costs and more danger.
Conservatives have spent months fighting for stronger take-home pay after a decade of rising costs. While Carney bragged about stealing our idea to remove the consumer carbon tax, he turned around and hiked the industrial carbon tax even higher behind Canadians’ backs.
Along with keeping taxes on food packaging and the clean fuel standard, which will make transportation even more expensive, the Liberals’ love of hidden taxes on food has only continued to increase the cost of living. It’s why Canadian families will be paying almost $1,000 more for food next year.
It’s the same failure to copy words and deeds that led Carney to say he wants to make our country an “energy superpower,” then back down to his keep-it-in-the-ground caucus that voted against building a pipeline and removing the tanker ban.
Instead of getting out of the way and approving the pipeline he promised, Carney is keeping the same anti-development regulatory regime for hundreds of projects. Under the Major Projects Office, only well-connected insiders like his corporate buddies are able to get anything built – with special status only for projects christened by Carney.
The same refusal to get government out of the way is also suffocating housing construction. After promising to cut development charges in half, Carney’s Minister of increasing housing costs in Vancouver, Gregor Robertson, dropped the promise entirely.
While it’s clear that builders are ready to build if he just gets out of the way, the Liberals are doubling down on their plan to build just 5,200 homes a year. That’s after the Liberals copied the idea of a GST cut, but failed to steal Conservatives’ plan to apply it to all new homes, excluding 95 per cent of homes from the tax cut.
It’s the same abandonment of the promise to ‘Spend Less and Invest More’ that delivered the costliest budget in Canadian history. Canadians will pay the cost of this $90 billion in net new spending, and there’s no hope that things will get better as the PBO found only a “7.5 per cent chance that the deficit-to-GDP ratio will decline” over the next five years.
The exact opposite of a decline is also what Liberals delivered on crime over the last decade, with soft-on-crime, Liberal bail that released repeat, violent offenders back on our streets. Instead of reversing their broken bail policies that made streets unsafe, Carney’s Liberals spent time negotiating a deal to restrict religious liberty.
Their out-of-touch priorities were on full display as they filibustered their own bail legislation at committee to focus on attacking religious freedom instead of making our communities safe. Conservatives motioned 18 separate times to get back on track with the priorities of Canadians, and the Liberals voted against each attempt.
While Conservatives focused on justice, Carney continued to push forward with his gun buyback boondoggle that will cost millions of dollars that could be used to stop firearm smuggling and hire more police officers. Even the Minister of Public Safety was revealed to not support the policy, admitting it’s entirely political and won’t keep Canadians safe.
Meanwhile, Liberal Minister of Justice Sean Fraser failed to take up a call by the Justice Committee to take action to protect children after the Supreme Court struck down mandatory minimums for child sexual abuse material. The Committee called on the government to take action by the end of the year and noted the premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario demand that the government use the notwithstanding clause to overturn the decision – a call that Conservatives joined.
Carney has also failed on his central promise to “handle” President Trump and “negotiate a win” on tariffs. Thousands of Canadians have been left worrying about putting food on the table as layoffs affect our steel, aluminum, auto and forestry industries. Instead of getting the deal he promised and protecting jobs, the Liberals gave Stellantis billions without any job guarantees, putting a factory in the US and workers out of a job.
On immigration, Liberals voted against the most comprehensive set of reforms presented by Conservatives to strengthen our border, while allowing illegal migrants to enter the country and bogus claimants to claim access to benefits Canadians can’t receive. Meanwhile, they refused to adopt Conservative legislation and doubled down on leniency for non-citizens convicted of serious crimes like sexual assault.
Only Conservatives will match words with action to restore a self-reliant Canada with strong take-home pay, safe streets, and strong borders.