Scheer to release Tories’ platform Friday
Meanwhile, Singh sets terms for NDP support in event of a minority government, including electoral reform
OTTAWA — The Conservatives are to release their campaign platform on Friday, a party spokesman says — just in time for the beginning of advance polls but not before the last televised leaders’ debate of the federal contest.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, who spent Thursday preparing for that night’s French-language debate battle, has vowed to balance the budget in five years, but the party has not yet released a full campaign platform detailing how that would be accomplished.
“I can assure you that Canadians will see our fully costed platform with plenty of time to make up their minds before they vote,” Scheer said earlier this week. The advance polls open Friday at 9 a.m. and will run throughout the holiday Thanksgiving weekend before closing at 9 p.m. on Monday.
Scheer has said his platform would lay out his party’s path to a balanced budget, complete with its targets on spending cuts and deficit reduction, and will include assessments of the parliamentary budget officer.
Scheer had no debate-day events on Thursday, but the Conservatives laid another plank in their platform by matching a Liberal promise to extend employment insurance leave by 15 weeks for adoptive parents, who currently only receive 35 weeks of EI-funded leave, and expand a tax credit for them.
The Liberals released ads on Thursday aiming at Scheer, hoping to deflect from scrutiny of Justin Trudeau himself with the Liberal leader saying in one ad that Scheer “wants you to think this election is about me — I think it’s about you.”
The Conservatives fired back on Facebook with a video urging Trudeau to fire former cabinet minister and Toronto candidate Judy Sgro, who told a radio station that her Black constituents in Toronto told her they loved Trudeau even more after learning he wore blackface. Sgro has apologized.
Earlier Thursday, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh laid out the conditions it would take to earn the support of the NDP in a minority Parliament.
His terms largely matched his campaign platform — national pharmacare and dental care programs, more affordable housing, eliminating interest on federal student loans, a tax for the super-rich and action on climate change. Singh added a new item: changing the way the country votes.
Electoral reform is an especially sore spot for the Liberals, who promised that the 2015 election would be the last under the traditional first-past-thepost electoral system, only to scuttle the recommendations of the committee they put together to examine the issue.
Singh’s NDP backs a system of mixed-member proportional representation, which advocates say better reflects the will of voters as expressed in the popular vote.
“Canadians should not have to be in this position where Mr. Trudeau is telling them to vote out of fear, to settle for less, to say, ‘OK, we may not be perfect, we might have broken our commitments on things, but vote for us anyways because you’re afraid of another party,’” Singh said.