Canada’s Conservatives Make Cutting Spending the Core of Their Final Election Pitch — After Record-High Early Voting

The Conservative Party of Canada published its official platform on Tuesday, promising millions of dollars in spending cuts while simultaneously lowering taxes and increasing spending on law enforcement and border control.

Party leader Pierre Poilievre announced the publication of the platform three days after his rival, Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney, published his – a day after Canada ended its brief early voting period. A record 7.3 million Canadians cast their ballots this weekend, according to Elections Canada, the government agency that runs elections. The number, in addition to being a record, marks a 25-percent increase in the number of people voting early from the 2021 election cycle that saw radical leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau maintain his grip on power.

Trudeau vacated the position, and the leadership of the Liberal Party, in January after a disastrous visit to Florida in late 2024 in which he attempted to convince then-President-elect Donald Trump not to impose tariffs on the country. Trump mocked Trudeau, referring to him as the “governor” of the “state” of Canada and repeatedly threatening to annex the country.

Carney won the internal Liberal Party race to run the political faction by a landslide, defeating longtime Trudeau confidante Chrystia Freeland. He became prime minister without ever having held or even run for a political position in his career.

Prior to running the Canadian government, Carney served as the head of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, and most recently held a senior role at the finance firm Brookfield Asset Management.

Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), speaks to members of the media as he arrives for a federal leaders’ debate in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (Graham Hughes/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The Conservative Party campaign has largely focused on the cost of living for working- and middle-class Canadian, as well as promising significant drops in income, property, and capital gains taxes. The platform published on Tuesday offered a plan to lower the government deficit by 70 percent while also lowering most taxes. This, Poilievre explained in the rollout of the plan, would be achieved “with less spending on bureaucracy, consultants, foreign aid and handouts to insiders and special interests, while boosting growth with resource jobs.”

“The platform forecasts $100 billion in deficits over the next four years, along with billions of dollars in tax cuts and new revenues,” Global News reported. “Poilievre said the Conservatives believe they can reduce the projected size of the deficit this fiscal year — $46.8 billion — to $31.3 billion through higher revenues and spending cuts.”

The increase in revenue, the Conservatives promised, would come from increasing tariffs, particularly on American goods. The platform claimed that tariffs on American goods alone would raise $20 billion this year.

Poilievre also promised a significant boost in spending to protect Canada’s borders. President Trump, in announcing tariffs on Canadian goods this year that he has subsequently paused, cited the Trudeau government’s failure to properly police the U.S.-Canada border as a major factor in his decision. Should Poilievre’s plan to secure the border succeed, it would eliminate a major reason for the Trump tariffs and, thus, a primary factor in Canada imposing the “counter-tariffs” that the Conservatives are predicting would raise the funds for their tax cuts.

In addition to the tariffs, however, the Conservatives suggested that the cancelation of expensive and largely dysfunctional Liberal government programs, such as a national gun buyback program, would also fund border security.

Elsewhere in the platform, Conservatives are promising increased support for law enforcement and plans to place more criminals behind bars for longer amounts of time.

The Conservative plan proposes, for example, life sentences for individuals convicted of a variety of crimes including human trafficking and fentanyl.

In contrast to the Conservative Platform, Carney’s Liberal platform published on Saturday proposed increasing government spending to $130 billion.

Carney’s plan is largely focused on spending to protect Canadian businesses from the now-postponed Trump tariffs and investing heavily in Canada’s failed social programs, including its healthcare system – which the United Nations has condemned for encouraging patients to commit suicide rather than offering medical care.

Nearly entirely absent from the campaign is the nefarious attempts by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate the election and influence Canadian politics. The Canadian government revealed in early April that it had discovered “coordinated inauthentic behaviour,” apparently originating in China, promoting Mark Carney, but dismissed it as ineffective. Carney recently traveled to China, in October, as part of his role with Brookfield Asset Management and, according to state media there, encouraged foreign businesses to invest there.

Poilievre has mentioned Carney’s apparent China ties in passing – especially alarming given China admitting to killing Canadian citizens on dubious “drug” charges – but has primarily focused his message on improving the cost of living and lowering taxes in Canada.

Current polling shows the Liberals with a consistent, but slim lead against the Conservatives – a dramatic inversion of polls in January showing Conservatives holding a two-digit lead in most polls. The CBC average of recent national polls as of Wednesday showed Carney’s party with 42.7 percent support, compared to Poilievre’s at 38.3 percent. The New Democratic Party (NDP), a far-left party that typically competes with the Liberals for votes, has failed to pull away any significant percentage of support from the Liberals during this cycle.

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