Poilievre brings message to Morris

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This article was published 12/08/2022 (1087 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre preached his message to an enthusiastic crowd at a rally in Morris on Friday.

Currently ranked as the favourite in the leadership race with close to 48 percent support from Conservatives in a mid-July Leger poll, the crowd of about 250 embraced his message of minimal government, eliminating funding for the CBC, scrapping the carbon tax and investing in Canadian energy.

The crowd also included a mix of politicians eager to support the Poilievre campaign.

Charleswood – St James – Assiniboia – Headingley MP Marty Morantz welcomed the crowd before Poilievre came out, and Sen. Don Plett from Landmark gave him an introduction.

Other high profile supporters on hand included Dauphin – Swan River MP Dan Mazier, Borderland MLA Josh Guenter, Springfield – Ritchot MLA Ron Schuler, McPhillips MLA Shannon Martin, Winkler Mayor Martin Harder and Emerson – Franklin Reeve Dave Carlson.

Plett, who was himself introduced as “the godfather of Manitoba politics” told the crowd he first met Poilievre before he became MP for the first time some 18-19 years ago. He assured them the principals he had then are still part of him today.

“One of the reasons why we’re in this today is we had people that ran an election on one platform and one policy and when they got elected, they changed,” he said.

But it was the main event the crowd was waiting for, and they were on their feet as Poilievre made his way to the centre of the room, taking a moment to embrace Plett before addressing the crowd. He wasted no time in getting the room excited, offering a quip that resulted in thunderous applause when the microphone malfunctioned during his first sentence or two.

“I think it might be a CBC microphone,” he said. “It turns off as soon as I start speaking.”

Poilievre presented the crowd with issues and potential solutions that he said his government would implement.

He spoke of what he calls “Justinflation”, saying the cost of living is being driven up by Liberal spending habits.

“We have to put in place exactly the opposite policies that got us here in the first place,” he said.

Poilievre said that means reining in spending, eliminating the Infrastructure Bank which he said only exists to provide loan guarantees to large corporations and eliminating waste and mismanagement.

That led him to the most crowd pleasing topic, eliminating approximately $1 billion in annual funding to the CBC.

“We’re going to bring the real world to government spending,” he promised.

Doing that would require government to “pay as you go”.

A policy Poilievre said worked well in the U.S. during the ‘90s, it would force government to find a dollar of savings for every new dollar of unbudgeted spending. That approach gave the U.S. balanced budgets and the paying off of $400 billion of debt according to Poilievre.

“You need hard legal limits on what politicians can spend to force them to make the normal trade-offs that every Canadian makes,” he said.

He also pledged to grow more food, build more homes and create more Canadian energy.

“We have the fewest number of houses per capita of any G7 country, even though we have the most land to build on,” he said.

Red tape and massive permit fees in many urban centres are to blame, he said. To combat that Poilievre pledged to link the number of dollars those centres get for infrastructure to the number of houses that get built.

He also told the crowd he would sell off 15 percent of the 37,000 government buildings that “are largely empty”, spaces that could be used for housing.

“It just warms my heart to think of a beautiful family that pulls up in this wonderful U-Haul to empty out its belongings and move into their beautiful new home in the former headquarters of the CBC,” he said.

Poilievre also took the federal government to task for suggesting that farmers use less fertilizer to achieve climate goals.

Instead he promised to eliminate the carbon tax and produce more energy by shipping natural gas to Europe and Asia and by approving Newfoundland’s plan to increase production of crude oil by 400,000 barrels per day, which would fully displace all the overseas oil that is coming in.

“Within five years let’s end dictator oil in Canada altogether,” he said.

He also pledged to take on the “new woke culture” and “political correctness”.

“We all know what political correctness is really about,” he said. “It’s about giving a small group of elites the power to decide what language we use because they know that when you control language then you control the people.”

Poilievre said he would repeal Bill C-11, a bill to regulate Canadian content on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. He’d also force universities to “allow students and faculty to speak their minds clearly without penalties and without censorship”.

He even pledged to ban all his ministers from attending the World Economic Forum.

Poilievre also criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s record on guns.

“We need to toughen the criminal code on the real criminals, put them in the slammer and stop attacking our sports shooters and our hunters,” he said.

As Poilievre left the stage he posed for photos with supporters.

As in other rallies, he did not allow media interviews.