Pierre Poilievre slams PM's online video for pushing more 'costly illusions'

· Toronto Sun

Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre pushed back on a weekend speech by Prime Minister Mark Carney, calling it another “costly illusion” that does nothing to help Canadians weather the economic challenges at home.

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The rebuttal came a day after Carney posted a speech online, in which he vowed to keep Canadians up to date on the Liberals’ economic plans and called the nation’s ties to the U.S. “weaknesses” that must be corrected .

The Conservative leader, however, said Carney’s speech “recycled the same promises and reused the same old lines, this time with a little more dramatic flair,” and added that it was “strangely timed” to precede the release of March’s inflation data from Statistics Canada.

“We do not need more costly illusions from Mr. Carney,” Poilievre said in his speech. “We need real-world results at your grocery store, your gas pump and in your bank account. We must be affordable at home, safe at home and strong at home, so that we can have unbreakable leverage abroad.”

Speech preceded release of inflationary data

The inflation data released Monday by Statistics Canada showed that the annual rate jumped to 2.4% in March, up from 1.8% in February and fuelled by a record percentage increase in gas prices from month to month of 21.2%.

Food inflation also increased by 4.4% on an annual basis from March 2025, according to Statistics Canada data, with the price of fresh or frozen meat jumping 10.6% on an annual basis.

Poilievre said other G7 countries are facing the “same global problems of tariffs and wars, but none are seeing the rise at the grocery stores that Liberals have imposed here at home.

“It’s not surprising that the prime minister wants to distract from his costly failures by pushing fear and re-upping his rhetoric yesterday,” he said.

Leverage to reach U.S trade deal ‘squandered?’

The Tory leader also took issue with Carney’s track record on home building and his push to approve major nation-building projects and said he has only increased government bureaucracy since replacing Justin Trudeau as prime minister.

He also said Carney – who now has majority control of Parliament after a combined five Tory and NDP MPs crossed the floor and after the Liberals swept three federal byelections earlier this month – has “squandered” Canada’s leverage in reaching a trade deal with the U.S., adding “we now pay twice the tariffs on far more goods than when Mr. Carney became prime minister.”

That comment came a few days after U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on free trade a “bad deal” that President Donald Trump might let lapse .

Lutnick also took aim at Canada’s trade strategy after the feds’ former trade negotiator said time was on Ottawa’s side in reaching a deal with Trump.

“That is, like, the worst strategy I’ve ever heard,” Lutnick said Friday at a conference in Washington, D.C. “They suck (in terms of trade imbalance), they — look, we are a $30-trillion economy, right?”

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Recent trade agreements ‘unenforceable,’ Poilievre says

Poilievre said that while he has a “detailed plan” to fight for tariff-free trade, “no one has any idea of Mr. Carney’s plan to save the over two million Canadian jobs that rely on trade with the U.S.”

He said Carney has signed no new trade deals with other nations and has instead reached “non-binding, unenforceable memorandums that amount to little more than press releases.

“These workers cannot eat speeches or videos or announcements,” he said.

To that effect, Poilievre said Canada should establish a “strategic energy and mineral reserve” to use as leverage to reach a trade deal with the U.S. He also called on the government, among other things, to eliminate carbon taxes, end gas and diesel taxes for the rest of the year and permit “rapid” energy projects to boost the economy.

“The United States wants access to all these minerals and energy,” he said. “Well, we should use those resources as leverage to get what we want: Tariff-free trade, including for our aluminum, steel, lumber and autos.”

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