Crowd of hundreds in Sudbury greets Conservative leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre

More than 350 people gathered at the Radisson Hotel on April 23 to attend the rally of Conservative leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre, on his first campaign stop in Sudbury.

The event was the initial stop of a Northern tour which will also see the candidate visit Timmins and North Bay.

It was another large crowd for Poilievre, whose campaign has been drawing big crowds numbering greater than 1,000. He greeted people, smiled for photos and sold party memberships. The politician has served as Conservative MP of Nepean-Carleton, later Carleton, since 2004, and secured approximately 50 per cent of the Ottawa electoral district’s vote in last year’s election.

Poilievre was greeted by Conservative candidate of record, Ian Symington, and introduced by Nickel Belt Conservative candidate of record, Charles Humphrey, who called Poilievre a “dominant force on the federal political stage”.

Humphrey said Poilievre is known for “an incisive wit, that inspires admiration and his supporters and strikes fear in the heart of his political opponents.” He added that “in my short time in this game, I've learned that when your political opponents and certain media outlets start targeting you, you know you're doing something right. Well, folks, I think it's clear that Pierre has been doing a lot of things very right.”

Media was not formally invited but allowed to attend, though the crowd booed heavily at the mention of federally-funded media outlets and Poilievre called attention to reporters while speaking of intent to defund the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.

“We’ll find another billion dollars of savings by defunding the CBC,” said Poilievre. “ I don't think they even showed up here today.” When a CBC Radio-Canada reporter identified himself, the crowd booed once again. “I’m sure he’s a great guy,” said Pollievre of the reporter, “It's not his fault. But, that will save us another billion dollars.”

He later noted that because he believed in free speech, everyone was welcome at his rallies, even “wokesters,” he explained, meaning people who considered themselves ‘woke,’ a term meant to indicate someone alert to injustice in society, especially racism.

“Everyone's welcome,” said Poilievre. “We believe in free speech, so even the ‘wokesters’ are allowed to come to my rallies if they want.”

Poilievre also spent much of his speech lamenting the loss of “freedom.”

“That's why people come here, right? They want to have freedom, the freedom to run their own lives to make their own decisions to choose their own government that they can hold accountable for decisions that affect their lives."

He said the true loss of freedom is reflected “in the 14-year-old girl was falling deep into depression because of being separated from her sporting and social activities for the last two years, or the waitress who mortgaged her house to start a business only to have it shut down so many times she could open it up again. Or the trucker? Yes, the trucker,” he said.

Poilievre was open about his support of “the truckers” referring to the so-called freedom convoy, saying that, “The trucker who is rightly called a hero for two long years, as he drove across the border without a vaccine delivering us the necessities of life to keep us all alive and suddenly became a villain.”

He continued by calling out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and referring to his Conservative leadership contender, Jean Charest, as a Liberal.

“Because Trudeau said that this trucker, who was alone all by himself in a truck all day, is now risking spreading viruses to other people, and he's a villain. Then when he (the trucker) went to Parliament Hill to raise his voice, he was called a criminal by Liberals like Trudeau, and Jean Charest,” said Poilievre. “ I got news for them. Our truckers are heroes, I was proud to stand with them all.” The crowd applauded wildly at this statement.

He also pledged that if he became prime minister, he would “reduce the difference between the have-nots and the have-yachts”, he said, by running the country’s finances the way you would a domestic budget.

“We're going to run the finances the way you run your household budget, by living within our means,” said Poilievre. “In the real world, you have to make decisions: little Johnny wants to start skiing this year, well, he's got to stop playing hockey; or the family wants to go on a nice big vacation, well, maybe the deck in the backyard will have to wait.”

He also said he would make it easier for the average Canadian by removing the “government gatekeepers” and “red tape.”

“It should be affordable to build, but the problem is government gatekeepers block building permits and drive up the cost by driving down the supply of housing,” said Poilievre. He mentioned the high cost of renting and that without a home of one’s own, one faces “an attack on the personal psychological security.”

“If you don't have a home, you're paying someone else's mortgage off, you can't build credit collateral, or a home equity for your eventual retirement,” he said. “It's an attack on the personal psychological security of people. We wonder why so many youth are suffering with mental illness while they feel totally insecure, because the thing that makes you secure a roof over your head walls, the wrapping around you, the shelter you need to survive is not available to you here in our country. So I'm going to bring in some very serious carrots and sticks for our big city politicians to get builders building.”

He said he will do so as prime minister by “adding a carrot and a stick.”

Poilievre said that cities with more than 500,000 people and overpriced real estate markets will have to “allow a 15-per-cent annual increase in housing construction or they will lose some of their federal infrastructure money.”

He added that under his leadership, “municipalities of any size that remove bureaucracy and allow for more construction will get more infrastructure dollars to match it, the number of dollars being tied to the number of homes actually built, because incentives work,” he said. “And in the real world, you get paid when you get the job done. That's how my infrastructure program will work.”

He also spoke of removing regulatory red tape.

“We're gonna get the regulatory red tape off the backs of our farmers and our ranchers to produce more good food,” said Poilievre. “We're going to take the carbon tax off of their fertilizer and their other expenses to bring down the price of food and to bring up the production of nutritious commodities here in Canada."

Poilievre spoke to loud applause when he mentioned a ban on “dictator oil,” meaning oil produced in countries with a dictatorship, and increased support of domestic oil production. A loud round of boos also accompanied the discussion of “overseas oil.”

He also offered an aside regarding pipeline protests. “By the way, every time an Indigenous community tries to build a pipeline or dig a mine, there's a bunch of protesters standing there trying to keep them in poverty, blocking them from working and building self-reliance and opportunity for their people,” said Poilievre. “But every day, off the coast of New Brunswick, big tankers from the Middle East come shipping in all of that oil and not a single protester shows up there to block them.”

Poilievre said he would repeal C-69, The modernization of the National Energy Board and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, which specifically states there will be no new pipelines built.

Poilievre is one of eight names to appear on the final ballot for the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race. In addition to Poilievre, those included thus far also include: