Pierre Poilievre plans to be tough on crime.
That’s the message the Conservative Party leader drove home during a chilly Wednesday morning press conference outside The Machine Shop in Sault Ste. Marie – the same place over 1,000 locals packed for his ‘Canada First’ rally Tuesday night.
Joined by Hugh Stevenson – the former Sault Ste. Marie Police chief turned Conservative MP hopeful – Poilievre spoke at length about rising crime rates and policies he views as soft on criminals during the so-called “lost Liberal decade.”
“We need a change. A lost Liberal decade of soft-on-crime, hug-a-thug policies has made life more dangerous,” Poilievre said. “That's one reason why we . . . need a change to lock up the worst offenders, treat addiction and bring home safety to our communities.”
Poilievre took aim at pieces of legislation like Bill C-5, which repealed certain mandatory minimum penalties, and Bill C-75, criticized as a “catch and release” policy that releases those charged with crimes at “the earliest opportunity and under the least onerous conditions,” Poilievre said.
“This is not happening only in our big cities, but in smaller cities like the Sault. Calls to police are up 7.8 per cent since 2020, and residents have woken up to stories about multiple shootings in a single weekend, or news that the police had raided an apartment finding guns, fentanyl and other drugs.”
In 2022, police in Vancouver had to arrest the same 40 individuals over 6,000 times, he said, as he argued the government needs to crack down on repeat offenders.
“The good news is that we don't have a lot of criminals in Canada. The bad news is they're very productive,” he said.
“It's time to lock up the very small group of rampant career criminals who are causing all the chaos.”
It’s a message that Stevenson, who Poilievre mistakenly referred to as “chief,” fully endorsed.
“I've been a police officer for more than 30 years. I've served as the police chief here for the last seven, and I can tell you things have never been worse,” Stevenson said.
“I've never seen so much violence and chaos on our streets, and I've never seen so many lives lost tragically to overdose.”
Due to “lenient bail practices,” Stevenson said some local offenders “walking around in this community have over 25 criminal charges at any one time,” arguing “only Pierre can bring the change we need.”
When asked about how the Conservative Party would tackle the opioid crisis – particularly in communities like Sault Ste. Marie, where the impact has been particularly devastating – Poilievre highlighted his party’s plan to help 50,000 people recover from addiction.
“We've lost 50,000 people to overdoses, so in honour of those we've lost, we want to treat the same number of people,” he said.
Poilievre said his party plans to fund treatment facilities based on their track records for treatment, providing higher amounts to those who help “tougher cases” of addiction successfully stay off drugs.
“Organizations like the Oake Centre in Winnipeg, Harvest House in Ottawa and in Moncton, or countless others like them, what they do is they take people off the streets. They give them treatment. They give them detox counselling, group therapy, physical exercise, sweat lodges for First Nations, job placement, housing transition, and they get them back on their feet,” he said.
“Organizations that have a proven track record of doing that are going to get funded from my program and so that they can expand.”
Seed funding will be available to organizations starting out, but going forward their funding will be determined by their program success.
“We have to start paying for results,” he said. “We want frontline, community-based, bottom-up organizations to get people off drugs after the lost Liberal decade of rising overdoses and crime and costs.”
With the looming threat of tariffs and economic chaos hanging over Algoma Steel, among other industries both local and beyond, Poilievre took aim at the Liberals once again.
Although Prime Minister Mark Carney eliminated the consumer carbon tax in recent weeks, a federal industrial carbon tax on large emitters remains in place.
“Mr. Carney has admitted that he wants an expanded industrial carbon tax, and when asked who would pay it, he specifically said the steel industry would pay it,” he said.
“Our plan to start with is to axe the entire carbon tax, including the industrial tax that Mr. Carney says he wants to keep in place. We will also put in place counter tariffs on the Americans to dissuade and deter their protectionism against our steel products.”
Poilievre also highlighted plans to cut capital gains taxes on domestic investment, which will “be like jet fuel” for the economy, and said his party – “the only party that supports building pipelines” – will “build Canadian pipelines with Canadian steel.”
During the press conference, a CTV National reporter cut Poilievre off mid-response on a question about foreign campaign donations, asking why he has yet to get his security clearance.
“Sorry, there’s just a protester here,” Poilievre said.
“It’s a reporter trying to ask a legitimate question,” the reporter responded.
The federal election will take place on April 28.