Pierre Poilievre The potential next leader of the federal Conservative Party spent Friday in the Okanagan. Pierre Poilievre, who commands about 50 percent of the Conservatives, met with party loyalists, local MPs and business leaders before departing for Vancouver. Poilievre took a few minutes Friday to speak with Castanet News about some of the issues facing Okanagan residents and Canadians. HOUSING Poilievre says communities across the interior are struggling with housing in part because larger communities like Vancouver are doing a poor job of building new homes, driving up prices and sending people looking for greener pastures. He said $650,000 of the cost of each housing unit in Vancouver goes to government bureaucracy alone. “I will require large, overpriced metropolitan centers to remove the watchdogs, build more houses as a condition of getting their full infrastructure amount. The number of dollars the City of Vancouver gets in infrastructure money will be tied to the number of houses The town hall allows it to be built,” he said. “I’m also going to sell 15 percent of the 37,000 federal buildings that we have in our inventory…many of which are nearly empty. Then we also need to lower taxes for workers and businesses to encourage and stimulate more investment”. Poilievre says the federal government doesn’t need to pump billions into a federal housing program, but it needs to so builders can get affordable permits to build more homes. INFLATION Poilievre believes the runaway inflation Canadians are feeling today is caused by the same factors that caused inflation in the 1970s – a government running monster deficits and raising taxes. “Half a trillion dollars of Liberal deficits have sent more money up the price of goods. Liberal taxes raise the cost of producing those goods. The more Trudeau spends, the more things cost. It’s Justin’s inflation. He has to let’s go back to common sense,” Poilievre said. “I will pass a law that will limit government spending so we can get rid of the inflationary deficit. I will get rid of the federal carbon tax mandate so British Columbians don’t have to pay a 200 percent increase in the carbon tax. “I will remove red tape so our businesses and farmers can produce more food, more energy and more homes.” He also pledged to fire the head of the Bank of Canada, saying that instead of acting independently, he is printing money to pay for Trudeau’s deficits. WINNING IN FEDERAL ELECTIONS Conservative leaders have long been thought to move to the right to win a leadership race and then rush back to the center during an election campaign. Poilievre says he won’t fall into that mindset, instead staying true to his policies. He says he believes policies like defunding the CBC and building pipelines will benefit all Canadians, not just the Conservative base. “Canadians understand that our failure to build pipelines is not protecting the environment, it’s just protecting foreign dictators. This week, Trudeau agreed to send the turbines back to Putin so he can pump gas through his pipeline to Germany. And Germany pays for this gas which it uses to finance its war,” he said. “We could sell Canadian gas to Germany if we could get approval for gas pipelines and export terminals, but that takes seven to 10 years. We could produce liquefied natural gas with the lowest environmental footprint on earth because we have zero hydro emissions in BC, Quebec and Newfoundland and because we have the cold weather that makes it easier to liquefy the gas.” MOVE THE PARTY FURTHER RIGHT Poilievre takes exception to the characterization that the Conservative party is moving more correctly than ever. “Balanced budgets, low taxes, resource development, free speech are all core conservative values that our party has championed for decades. I would say they are mainstream Canadian values that both the Liberals and Conservatives have embraced unanimously.” , he said. “What has happened is Trudeau’s Liberals have become radicalized. They have embraced money printing deficits that have caused irreparable inflation, tried to censor what people see and say on the Internet, brought in emergency legislation to freeze people’s bank accounts. they have blocked resource development to make our people poorer. “These are radical policies that are out of touch with mainstream, moderate Canadians.” The Conservatives will elect their new leader on September 10.
