Liberal Leader Mark Carney took his promise of making Canada an “energy superpower” to the heart of Canada’s oil industry Wednesday, becoming the second party leader in three days to promise to speed up the review process to greenlight major national energy projects.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made a one-project, one-review promise at a campaign stop in northwest British Columbia on Monday. Both parties are trying to convince Canadians they can ditch Canada’s reputation as a place where big projects take far too long to get built.
With punishing U.S. tariffs under President Donald Trump still dominating much of the election conversation, both the Liberals and Conservatives are wooing Canadians with pitches to reduce Canada’s trade reliance on the U.S. by, among other things, building new pipelines and other energy infrastructure.
Trump’s global trade war took centre stage again Wednesday afternoon when he paused his global reciprocal tariffs on most nations for 90 days — while offering no changes to the tariffs hitting Canada.
Speaking before that announcement, Carney said the tariffs are hurting Canadian businesses and workers and Canada will respond not just with retaliatory tariffs but by “thinking and acting” bigger.
He said he would look to displace energy imported from the United States.
Two days before the campaign began, Carney, in his role as prime minister, met with the country’s premiers in Ottawa, where they began to hammer out a plan to have only one project review — including reviews of environmental impacts — instead of two from each level of government.
On Wednesday, Carney expanded that with a promise to sign agreements within six months of taking office with willing provinces and Indigenous governments that would recognize energy project assessments from their jurisdictions.
“Under my leadership, it’s time to build and we will build big time,” he said.
He said that while Canada has “enormous opportunities” in clean energy, “at the same time, we want to dominate the market for conventional energy.”
That means “in the long term, it needs to be lower carbon,” he said, adding that “we’re looking to work with industry in order to do it.”
On Monday, Poilievre promised to create a one-stop shop that would see one application and one environmental review for each project.
Carney cancelled the consumer carbon levy on April 1 but is keeping the carbon price for big industrial emitters in place. Poilievre has said he’ll scrap it too.
Poilievre campaigned Wednesday in the northern Ontario city of Sault Ste. Marie, under the bridge that connects it to Michigan. Algoma Steel, which makes steel sheet and plate products, is the largest employer in the city of about 72,000 people.
Poilievre was there to showcase his crime platform, including a “three-strikes” law that would make people convicted three times of “serious” offences ineligible for bail, probation, parole or house arrest. Those offenders also would be sentenced to a minimum prison term of 10 years and could get a life sentence.
They could not “be released until they have proven that they are no longer a danger to society,” Poilievre said.
“Under my watch, the only way for repeat offenders to obtain their freedom will be through spotless behaviour and clean drug tests during a lengthy minimum prison sentence with earned release, dependent on making real progress in improving their lives, such as learning a trade or upgrading their education,” he added.
He insisted the law wouldn’t run afoul of the Constitution, even though several justice experts have said some of his crime policies are likely to get struck down by the courts.
Earlier in the campaign, Poilievre promised a law that would ensure life sentences for people convicted of five or more counts of human trafficking, importing or exporting 10 or more illegal firearms, or trafficking fentanyl. He also said repeat offenders would be ineligible for bail.
Some experts have said those measures are unconstitutional and would very likely be struck down by the courts — which is what happened with crime measures passed by the former Conservative government under then-prime minister Stephen Harper.
Ben Perrin is a law professor at the University of British Columbia who served in the Prime Minister’s Office under Stephen Harper as in-house legal counsel and lead criminal justice and public safety policy adviser. He said on his website Wednesday that Poilievre’s proposed law is “a discredited ‘tough on crime’ policy imported from the United States.”
He said research has found such laws actually increase homicide rates by 23 to 29 per cent “because witnesses or victims are killed to prevent a conviction for the third offence.” They also don’t prevent crime and lead to “absurd outcomes,” he added.
“In Canada, they would also be patently unconstitutional,” Perrin said.
Asked Wednesday whether he would invoke the notwithstanding clause to pass his proposed laws, Poilievre argued his proposals are constitutional.
Responding to Poilievre’s proposal, Carney said while the “full force of the law” should be applied to habitual offenders, “I don’t jump to a baseball rule of three strikes and you’re out.”
In 2022, a Liberal government bill ended mandatory minimum sentences for all drug convictions and for some firearms and tobacco-related offences. The changes reversed “tough on crime” measures passed under Harper.
That bill came after Canadian courts pushed back against mandatory minimum sentences. In a 2016 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a number of mandatory minimum penalties in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was campaigning in Vancouver Wednesday morning, where he promised to expand the pharmacare program his party pushed the Liberals to enact under their supply and confidence deal in the last Parliament.
Singh said an NDP government would establish a complete public pharmacare system within four years of being elected.
Both Carney and Singh were planning to travel to Saskatoon later Wednesday for rallies. It is the first time in this campaign any party leader has held an event in Saskatchewan.
There are 14 federal ridings in Saskatchewan, which has been a sea of blue in recent federal elections.
The full list of federal election candidates in ridings across the country was made available by Elections Canada on Wednesday.
The Conservatives will not have a full slate of 343 candidates after Elections Canada rejected nomination papers for Chanie Thériault, who was to run against Liberal incumbent and former cabinet minister Jean-Yves Duclos in a Quebec City riding.
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