Poilievre rallies business community at Treasure Mills

Aurora-based food producer Treasure Mills was a sea of excitement on November 29 as the school snack maker welcomed Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to its Engelhard Drive facility.

There to meet with workers and to hold a roundtable discussion with members of the local business community, the Leader of the Opposition followed his tour with a rally with supporters.

At the event, where he was supported by Federal Conservative candidates Sandra Cobena (Newmarket-Aurora) and Costas Menegakis (Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill), Poilievre told the crowd it was time to “axe” the Carbon Tax, put in measures to keep homegrown businesses on this side of the border, address the housing crisis by removing the GST on new home purchases under $1 million, and to restore a “warrior culture” rather than a “woke” culture to the Canadian identity.

Following a speech to supporters, he met with local media where he underscored his campaign commitments, including how they dovetail with a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods exported to the United States, as floated by US President-Elect Donald Trump.

“I think it would be devastating if that were to happen,” said Poilievre on the proposed tariff. “We have already lost half a trillion in investment from Canada to the US and the gap between the Canadian-US economy is worse than it has been in a century. A combination of Trudeau's tax increases and Donald Trump's tariffs would be crippling to our economy. We need to take action now: axe the carbon tax, take GST off new homes, reduce taxes on investment, reduce red tape so we can get faster building permits and drive a hard bargain with President Trump to protect our economy and get him to back down from these tariffs.”

For a community like Aurora that has a high manufacturing presence, particularly in the automotive industry, Poilievre said that Prime Minister Trudeau's “destructive policies” have resulted in the loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector.

“We need to lower energy costs by axing the carbon tax, we need to unleash the production of Canadian resources by permitting more mines, more pipelines, more oil and gas production – that would generate more demand for manufactured products that come out of Aurora and support our resource sector.

“We also need to back the trades, get more boots not more suits, to build the economy of the future.”

When asked how his proposal to eliminate the GST on home purchases under $1 million in a community like Aurora where the price of townhomes regularly top that threshold, the Leader of the Opposition said it was time to “stop and take a breath” and consider the factors that led to rising housing costs.

“Ten years ago, even in Aurora, $1 million would have bought you a castle. What happened?” he said. “Trudeau doubled housing costs. He did that with out-of-control money printing and immigration that ballooned demand and with billions of dollars for local bureaucracies that block construction. What's the solution? We have to stop the money-printing, rein in immigration, and incentivize municipalities to free up land, speed up permits and cut development charges to build 15 per cent more per year. We also have to take the GST and get the Provinces to do the same – take the PST off – and that would save over $100,000 on every newly-built home. The biggest problem with housing: too much taxes. A third of the cost of every new home in Ontario today is just new taxes. Should you get rid of those taxes and almost everyone would be able to afford a home.

“Right now, developers can go down to North Carolina and they can get a permit in two weeks and they pay probably $30,000 or $40,000 development charge. When they come here and they wait two or three years, then they pay $200,000 in development charges. Where do you think they are going to build homes? It's extremely uncompetitive to build anything in Canada. Our goal should be to have the fastest building permits in the developed world and the lowest taxes on homes. That's what I am going to be fighting for.”

Another factor, he said, was to get rid of “woke” culture in favour of a “warrior” culture. Asked to unpack his definition of “woke” when some critics liken “woke” to having empathy towards one's neighbour, he described it as “the latest version of communism.”

“It's designed to divide people by race, religion, gender, vaccine status, wealth and other dividing lines,” he continued. “It divides people to give more control to the government. It is an extremely destructive ideology and we're seeing Canada… everything is broken in Canada after nine years of Trudeau: 1,400 homeless encampments, the immigration system is a total mess, the border is falling apart, crime is up by 50 per cent, gun crime is up 116 per cent, homelessness is up 38 per cent. I don't know if you call any of that empathetic, but this is the result of the woke agenda. It is a corrosive, toxic, horrific ideology and we have to end it.

“It's about control, and it is about taking over people's wallets, their lives and their thoughts, and we must put an end to ‘wokeism' and bring back the common-sense consensus that we had for Canada: to make Canada the best place on earth.”

By Brock Weir