This composite image made from five file photos shows, from left to right, Liberal Leader Mark Carney on March 21, 2025; Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on March 4, 2025; NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on Jan. 22, 2025; Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet on March 5, 2025 and co-Leader of the Green Party Jonathan Pedneault on March 5, 2025. LA PRESSE CANADIENNE/Sean Kilpatrick, Adrian Wyld, Justin Tang The Canadian Press

1) (Updated) Leaders pitch savings bonds, GST-free Canadian cars to bolster tariff-struck economy

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Jim Bronskill, April 3, 2025

The New Democrats and Conservatives pitched fresh ideas on the federal election trail Thursday to make Canada and its workers more resilient in the face of tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh proposed tax-free savings bonds, while Pierre Poilievre said a Conservative government would remove the federal sales tax from Canadian-made vehicles.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney, in his role as prime minister, met virtually Thursday with Canada’s premiers to discuss the U.S. tariffs as Canadian automakers started to feel the effects.

Speaking after the meeting, Carney announced Canada will match Trump’s 25 per cent auto tariffs with a levy on vehicles imported from the United States.

He said every dollar raised through the counter-tariffs would go directly to Canadian auto workers and affected companies. 

The Canada Victory Bonds proposed by the NDP would be available in 5-year and 10-year terms and pay a compounding interest rate of 3.5 per cent, the party said in a media statement.

Singh told a campaign event in Ottawa that Canadians are looking for ways to support their country and “do their part.”

“This is an opportunity for Canadians to invest in our country. In fact, during the world war, victory bonds raised more revenue than taxes,” Singh said at the National Arts Centre with the National War Memorial behind him.

Interest earned on the bonds would be tax-free if held to maturity, Singh said, meaning a $100 bond would grow to $118.77 in five years, or $141.06 in 10 years.

“We’re going to need to raise money to be able to build the roads, the bridges, the infrastructure we need,” he said. “Instead of relying solely on banks and paying debt and interest to those banks, let’s pay interest to Canadians instead.”

Campaigning in Kingston, Ont., Poilievre promised to remove the federal sales tax from Canadian-made vehicles in response to Trump’s tariffs. 

Waiving the GST on a qualifying $50,000 automobile would save the buyer $2,500, he said.

Poilievre pledged that if the Conservatives form government after the April 28 election, he will set up a $3-billion fund for businesses hit by American tariffs to keep workers employed through the cross-border trade dispute.

Carney said Canada’s newly announced counter-tariffs will hit all vehicles from the U.S. that do not comply with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement and any non-Canadian content in compliant vehicles, but they will not apply to vehicle content from Mexico.

On Wednesday, Trump confirmed he is going ahead with 25 per cent tariffs on automobile imports, which will add to existing 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S., including from Canada.

He also unveiled a 10 per cent baseline tariff on imports from most countries and a lengthy list of higher tariffs dozens of countries will face. A White House fact sheet said goods imported under the CUSMA free-trade pact will not face tariffs, although imports that fall outside of it will be hit with 25 per cent levies.

Both Canada and Mexico remain under the threat of economywide duties that Trump has linked to the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.

Carney said Thursday that Trump’s tariffs on Canada are unjustified, unwarranted and misguided — and warned that Trump’s overall campaign of trade hostility against countries around the world will “rupture” the global economy.

— With files from Craig Lord, Darryl Greer, Kyle Duggan and Catherine Morrison in Ottawa and Sarah Ritchie in Kingston, Ont.

2) (Updated) Poilievre, Singh focus on affordability, Carney visits his Ottawa riding

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Dylan Robertson and Catherine Morrison, March 29, 2025

Affordability measures dominated discussion on the federal election trail on Saturday, with the NDP focused on capping the price of some food items and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre offering more tax writeoffs to some trades workers.

The first week of the federal election drew to a close with both Liberal Leader Mark Carney and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh paying a visit  to the national capital. Singh visited a food bank in the city’s Ottawa Centre riding, and Carney stopped by his own campaign office in Nepean for the first time. Carney is seeking a seat in the suburban Ottawa riding and met with campaign volunteers and supporters in his only scheduled stopo of the day.

Singh promised to introduce emergency price caps on basic food items like pasta, frozen vegetables and infant formula. He is also calling for higher taxes on grocery chain profits and tighter competition regulations for the sector.

“A lot of Canadians are worried about how much it costs them when they go to the grocery store,” Singh said, noting those fears have intensified due to  anxiety about the impact of U.S. tariffs under President Donald Trump.

“I want folks to know that we see you and we hear you,” Singh said.

Singh said corporate grocery stores are “ripping you off and driving up the cost of food.”

He said the emergency price cap would follow similar moves in France and Greece, and a party spokesperson said the measures proposed Saturday would only cost Ottawa some public-service hours and would not require federal subsidies.

Poilievre, the first national party leader to campaign in any of the prairie provinces so far, was in Winnipeg for an afternoon rally hours after unveiling a promise to help trade workers who must travel more than 120 kilometres from their homes to their jobs.

He said a Conservative government would expand the writeoff that trade workers can declare for work travel.

Trades workers can currently claim up to $4,000 in travel expenses for work tasks, which Poilievre said he would expand to include “the full cost of food, transportation and accommodation.”

The Tories also say they want to end tax writeoffs involving luxury corporate jets, arguing those businesses can instead write off the equivalent cost of commercial flights as well as any required charter flights.

“You know, we as conservatives want to unleash the strength of our mighty workers, unleash our economy, and put our country first for a change, by delivering tax fairness for everyone,” Poilievre said.

The Conservatives have been asked how much these measures would cost the federal government.

The announcement is unlikely to diminish criticism from within Poilievre’s own conservative circles that he and his campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, are failing to read the mood of Canadians and refocus the campaign on the impact of Trump’s tariffs and Canadian sovereignty.

Kory Teneycke, who was a communications director under former prime minister Stephen Harper and recently ran Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s third successful election campaign, threw down the gloves over Poilievre and the federal party’s performance in an event at the Empire Club of Canada on March 26.

“In the campaign cockpit, every buzzer and alarm is going off,” Tenneycke said. He also accused Poilievre of focusing on things that have little relevance to voters now.

Before Trump took office, the Poilievre Conservatives had soared in the polls, and appeared to be heading toward forming a majority government on messages about the Liberals making life more expensive and harder overall.

But since Trump was sworn in and began his relentless campaign of tariffs, economic uncertainty and threats of annexation, Canadians priorities and anxieties have shifted.

Most polls now have the Liberals leading the Conservatives, a drastic turn around for a party that at the end of December trailed the Tories by more than 25 points.

Asked Saturday if his campaign was going to pivot at all to focus more directly on the impact of tariffs, Poilievre said he would retaliate against U.S. duties but turned the focus immediately back on the Liberals in Canada for what he called anti-energy laws that have driven investment elsewhere.

“We don’t know exactly what the Americans are going to do,” he said. “The president seems to change his mind from time to time. But we know what we can do. What we can do is take back control of our economic destiny, build an economic fortress by bringing home production, unlocking our resources, and standing strong for our economy here at home”

Carney spent a large chunk of the first week directly addressing Canadians concerns about Trump, adjusting his campaign plan and donning his prime minister’s hat to return to Ottawa to meet with his U.S.-Canada cabinet committee following Trump’s new auto tariff announcement on Wednesday.

Carney also spoke with Trump by phone Friday for the first time. He also made announcements in the last week to aid the auto industry and its workers with a $2 billion fund, and to encourage the construction of nation-building projects like new highways and railways with a $5 billion infrastructure program.

Carney stopped by his candidate office in Nepean on Saturday, where he was greeted by a small but enthusiastic group of campaign workers and volunteers.

“Who is ready to stand up,” he started out saying, before teasing someone who had accidentally knocked over a campaign sign. 

“Who is ready to put back the Carney signs,” he joked, drawing laughter.

He thanked them for their support to help get him elected as an MP.

He has faced questions about his decision to run in that seat, which became vacant only after the Liberal party ousted MP Chandra Arya as its candidate three days before the election was called.

The Liberal party has not clearly laid out exactly what Arya did that has prevented him from being a candidate, though Carney says it was a decision that was up to the green-light committee that screens candidates.

Last August, several Liberals criticized Arya for making an unsanctioned trip to India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, even as Canada said it had evidence that agents of Modi’s government were involved in the murder of a Canadian citizen in British Columbia in 2023. 

The Liberal party also barred Arya from running for the party leadership in January, citing various rules violations.

— With files from Steve Lambert in Winnipeg, David Baxter, Kyle Duggan and Catherine Morrison

3) Carney promises home building program, Poilievre pitches national energy corridor

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Jim Bronskill, March 31, 2025. 

Liberal Leader Mark Carney promised Monday to get the federal government back into the business of home building, while Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives pitched a national energy corridor to fast-track approval of key infrastructure.

The two rival party leaders touted the plans as national projects to stand up to the United States as it menaces Canada’s economy with a steady stream of fresh tariffs.

Canadians head to the polls in a general election on April 28.

The Liberals propose doubling the pace of construction to almost 500,000 new homes a year, unleashing the power of public-private co-operation on a scale not seen since the end of the Second World War.

The government would create a new entity, Build Canada Homes, to act as a developer on new housing projects and provide more than $25 billion in financing to innovative builders of prefabricated homes in Canada.

At a campaign stop in Vaughan, Ont., Carney said the new approach aimed to “build faster, build smarter and to build more affordably.”

The Conservatives’ planned national energy corridor would expedite approval of transmission lines, railways, pipelines and other critical infrastructure. 

Canada needs big projects that link its regions, east to west, as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens Canada with tariffs, Poilievre said at an event in Saint John, N.B.

“We need to be able to get our resources across Canada, bypassing America, so we can trade more with each other and sell our resources to the world,” he said. 

Eyes are turning to Wednesday when Trump is likely to slap “reciprocal tariffs” on countries including Canada over various alleged trade practices. 

Carney has stressed the need for Canada to fundamentally reimagine its economy in response to Trump’s levies and threats of annexation.

“We are facing the biggest crisis of our lifetimes, and we are going to build our way out of it,” Carney said Monday.

Poilievre has campaigned on a need for change, warning that Canadians can ill afford to re-elect the Liberals after almost 10 years at the helm. 

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was set to start the day in Victoria before travelling to Edmonton.