Among many promises made this morning, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told a large crowd of tradespeople that he plans to do away with the woke culture and bring in a warrior culture.
“This will be a country that works for the workers,” he told a group of more than 100 people at the Boilermakers Local 128 Training Centre in Burlington on Thursday morning. “A country where hard work pays off with a powerful pay cheque that buys affordable food, gas, and homes in safe neighbourhoods based on the common sense of the common people.”
The visit was part of Poilievre’s tour in the Golden Horseshoe to meet with Canadians and share his plan to axe the tax, stop the crime, and build the homes. He highlighted his recently-announced plan to cut the sales tax on new homes under $1 million, which he says will save Canadian families $43,225 on the purchase of the average home in Ontario.
The locals cheered wholeheartedly as Poilievre said that alone will stimulate an additional 30,000 new home builds every year that will create jobs and affordable homes for people.
“I will also require municipalities speed up permits, free up land and cut development taxes as a condition of getting their federal infrastructure money,” he said, among many promises he outlined. “What we need in this country is more boots and less suits.”
He said Canada had a deal he calls the Canadian promise.
“You work hard, you get good food and a nice house on a safe street and it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can achieve anything you want with hard work,” Poilievre said. “That was the deal. But after nine years of Trudeau and the NDP Liberals, that deal, like everything else, is broken; everything costs more.
“We’ve got two million people lined up at food banks, 25 per cent of our population living in poverty. We have 1,400 homeless encampments now in Ontario alone,” he said, adding Toronto is the 10th most expensive housing market in the world. “We have in Canada today a situation where 80 per cent of Canadians say that only the very rich can have a home. Housing costs have literally doubled.”
He promised the Conservatives will cut income tax so workers can bring home more of the money they earn.
“Hard work actually pays off. We’ll make it so that the trades workers can write off the full cost of their food, transportation, and accommodation to go from one job site to another,” he said.
He also pledged that more homes will be built in Canada.
“We have the fewest homes per capita of any country in the G7, even though we have by far the most land to build on,” he said. “What’s stopping us?
“Government is the number one cost in a new home. Government taxes make up one third of the cost of every new home in Ontario today.”
Further he said the delays caused by “the consultants, the lawyers, the changing policies, all which feed the bureaucracy, but don’t build homes. In fact, when you buy a new home today, more of the money from what you pay goes to bureaucrats than goes to the carpenters, electricians, and plumbers who actually build the homes.
“That will stimulate an additional 30,000 new home builds every single year that will create jobs for people and affordable homes for our people.”
Additionally, he said he will also require municipalities to speed up permits, free up land and cut development taxes as a condition of getting their federal infrastructure money to get more homes built.
“We’ll sell off 6,000 federal buildings and thousands of acres of federal land to build, build, build. And we will back the trades,” Poilievre said. “We’re going to need boots and not suits to build in the future.”
The Ontario government is investing $3 million over three years in Helmets to Hardhats Canada to help 650 active and former Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members transition to civilian life by training them for careers in Ontario’s construction sector. Poilievre said he will also support that program.
Helmets to Hardhats Canada, a registered non-profit organization that provides second career opportunities in the construction industry to those in the military community through tailored referral services, safety training and peer counselling for serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces, veterans and military families, will receive federal funding too.
Furthermore he said federal government money has been going to universities and white-collar education.
“We need more skilled trades and I will make sure that the lion’s share of federal education and training dollars go to the trades because that’s what we need to build this economy.”
Below, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre (centre) with some of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers in Burlington on Thursday morning (from left): Jacques Mineault, Goksen (Turk) Nalsok, Eddie Wall and Dave Maddison. Julie Slack Photo