Axe The Tax Election Now

The following is a transcript of the Hon. Pierre Poilievre’s remarks from December 17th, 2024. These remarks have been edited for length. Check against delivery. 

December 17, 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Yesterday, we were reminded that if you hire clowns, you get a circus. But no one should be laughing because there are real consequences for yesterday’s chaotic Liberal clown show.

These are the consequences. The deficit is 50 percent higher than we were promised. Our dollar has plunged below 70 cents American for the first time in ages, which means more expensive fuel, food, clothing, and materials for things like automobiles. It means our people will be poorer and the dollars they work so hard to earn are worth less. The real consequences of yesterday’s clown show are playing out in tragedies right across this country. But before we talk about those tragedies, let’s talk about this incredible, ridiculous, embarrassing Liberal day on Parliament Hill.

Let’s capture the story here for a second. The world markets were watching to find out the size of our deficit. Remember Chrystia Freeland, after helping Justin Trudeau double the national debt and add more debt than all prior prime ministers combined, said we can’t go beyond the $40 billion guardrail or else we’ll go off the cliff.

But throughout the year, with the prompting of Carbon Tax Carney, Trudeau’s number one economic advisor, he kept pushing his Finance Minister further and further leftward; more spending for this or that costly political gimmick. Again and again, he grabbed the wheel of the financial bus and jerked it to the left with the enthusiastic encouragement of Carbon Tax Carney. And as we were approaching the fall update, he grabbed the wheel entirely, jerked it to the left, smashed the bus through the guardrail, and off the cliff. And then he thought he would blame Chrystia Freeland for it all and put in Carbon Tax Carney. They had a deal that he would take Freeland’s job. Well, when Carney saw how bad it all looked, he said, ‘I no longer want the job, so just blame Chrystia Freeland and make her wear it all.’

Some feminist. The same week as Trudeau was insulting Americans for not electing a woman president, he was busy throwing his own woman Deputy Prime Minister under the bus to replace her with a man. You can’t make this stuff up. And then that man said, I don’t want the job anymore. So the published order of precedent that the cabinet of the Government of Canada had decided on was that the job would go to the Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne. He immediately resigned, faster than you could even report that he had the job.

The next person in the order of precedent was Randy Boissonnault. Remember the ‘Two Randys.’ The Randy who claimed that he wasn’t the other Randy in order to cover up the fact that he was trying to take public money for his company while he was still a minister. The man who falsely claimed Indigenous status and had to resign in scandal.

Well, he was temporarily the finance minister yesterday as well, and then we realized he couldn’t have the job, so they gave it to Dominic LeBlanc. So yesterday, we had four ministers of Finance on the day they were introducing this $62 billion deficit. Global markets took note, and the dollar plunged below 70 cents US. It never once got that low under Stephen Harper. What does that mean? It means your dollar buys less fuel, food, clothing, and other internationally priced commodities all automatically become more expensive for Canadians. The dollars that our people work so hard to earn are worth less because of the chaos and clown show of Justin Trudeau and the NDP-Liberals.

And then there is the NDP. Yesterday, Jagmeet Singh had the audacity to claim that he thinks Trudeau should resign after Singh voted just last week to keep Trudeau in power. I put forward a non-confidence motion, which would have fired Trudeau and triggered an axe the tax election. And I put in that motion the words of Jagmeet Singh, and he voted against his own words. And now that those votes are behind him, he changes his story entirely. And of course, the media gives him a free ride; not questioning him at all on the obvious contradiction of claiming a man should be fired when you vote in the House of Commons to keep him in the job.

The decision to call an axe the tax election is up to Jagmeet Singh and Jagmeet Singh alone. He has got to end his hypocrisy and stop selling out the people and put his votes where his words are. He must trigger an election to join with me in signaling non-confidence to bring down this government as soon as legally possible.

Jagmeet Singh, Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland, Mark Carney, the dramas about their jobs, their pensions, their titles, their interpersonal squabbles. It’s all very entertaining if it weren’t so tragic because there are real dramas out there that matter.

There are the dramas of the people who wake up in the morning to find their cars missing because it has been stolen due to catch-and-release bail. There’s the drama of the mother burying her face in her hands because her child has become one of the 47,000 who have died of drug overdoses since Trudeau liberalized hard drugs. There is the drama of refugee camps opening up in Nepean in Ottawa that look like something out of a third-world country. There is the drama of the 1,400 homeless encampments that these socialist policies have caused through high taxes, through blocking our resource projects and through preventing homes from being built.

There is the drama of the 39-year-old woman desperate to have kids, but unable to buy a home in which to raise them. There is the drama of the worker at the Labatt Brewery who told me that he is ashamed when he talks to his kids because he never sees them due to the three jobs he has to work just so that he can pay the rent. There’s the drama of mothers and fathers sitting down with their kids saying you cannot play hockey this year because our food, our energy prices have gone up. And there is the national humiliation of the President of the United States laughing at our weak, pathetic prime minister.

What an embarrassment to all Canadians. Canadians are good, proud, decent people. We as a country were admired in this world before Justin Trudeau and the NDP-Liberal government. People came from around the world to call this place home because they knew there was no better place.

They were handed a flag when they got citizenship and told, congratulations, you live in the best place on earth. You’ve just won the lottery of life. There was a promise in this country that anyone from anywhere could do anything. That hard work would get you a powerful paycheck and pension, that buys affordable food and homes in safe neighborhoods. That promise is broken.

But the good news is we’re going to bring home that promise. We need to trigger an axe the tax election as soon as possible so that we can elect a Common Sense Conservative government that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. But more than that, a government that will bring our people together, unite all of us: Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, the people of this country, the common people around our common values, our common sense, our common history, and our common optimistic future.

Most of all, we need a leader with the brains and backbone, the strength and smarts, to stand up for us on the world stage. To face down the threats of tariffs and the leaders around the world and make our country proud again. In essence, we need to make Canada strong and free. Canada first. Canada last. Canada always. Let’s bring it home.