The party leaders are focusing on their platforms as we get closer to election day.
With the release of their full platform, the Conservatives are vowing to decrease spending and eliminate the deficit in the next five years.
Explaining his fully costed platform, Leader Andrew Scheer says they will find savings to balance the budget by 2024-2025.
“We’re going to get it from corporate welfare, we’re going to get it from foreign aid–from relatively-well-off countries that don’t need Canadians’ dollars,” Scheer explains, adding he would also eliminate “March Madness” spending at the end of the fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the Liberals are touting their platform which was released 12 days ago, as Leader Justin Trudeau campaigned in Ottawa.
He critiques the Conservatives for not revealing their full platform earlier.
“The reality is, I think we all know it, you don’t release your best work at six o’clock on Friday of a long weekend,” Trudeau told supporters at a campaign stop.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh revealed his party’s platform, which features $35 billion in new spending at a $10 billion deficit increase in the first year.
Singh explains they put a lot of thought into other measures like a 1% tax increase on the rich.
“The advice we received [was] that it would cost more [for those with a net worth over $20 million] to try to hide money than it would be to just pay the 1%. That’s why we chose that 1% number, we were anticipating that. And we’re also going to put a lot of money towards enforcement,” Singh explains.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is calling for more discussion of international affairs in the election campaign.
May says it was a major concern for Canadians she spoke to, adding the two issues are connected.
The climate crisis is a crisis in international affairs,” she notes. “It means, for instance, Arab Spring and the instability in the region was prompted by, according ot policy experts, a prolonged drought.”
For the PPC, Leader Maxime Bernier is set to talk in Halifax tonight.
