The leader of the Conservative Party made stops in Cambridge and Kitchener on Friday to meet with business owners and workers, laying out his plans if he's elected the next Prime Minister.
Pierre Poilievre spoke to the workers at the Arrow Engineered Products factory on Fountain Street this morning, making promises to "axe the tax" and lower housing costs around the country.
He also announced he wanted to cut crime by abolishing catch-and-release laws and banning hard drugs.
"Right now it's like the Hotel California; they check out, but they never really leave," said Poilievre. "They get out of prison long enough to commit the next crime and then they are arrested and they get put back in."
He thinks that more money is spent on arresting and charging individuals than keeping them in prison so they don't commit any more crimes.
Poilievre said he wants to go back to Stephen Harper's administration policies that kept people locked up for longer, stating that prison rates went down during this time.
"During the last Conservative government, everyone said that we would have to build more prisons, but the prison population went down," he said. "The worst offenders, they're going in and out anyway. We just decided to keep them there."
According to Statistics Canada, however, Harper's Conservative government held the highest total count of people incarcerated with 25,405.4 people in jail in 2015.
Since the federal Conservatives left office, incarceration numbers dropped to 22,318.5 in 2022/2023, the lowest numbers since 2005/2006, the year before Harper assumed his role as prime minister.
Poilievre also promised to ban hard drugs such as opioids and fund treatment services.
"We want to stop giving out drugs. Right now, the Trudeau government has a policy of handing out tax-funded opioids that keep people addicted and that make money for corrupt pharmaceutical companies and drug dealers on the black market," said Poilievre.
The Conservatives have been critical of harm reduction strategies that have been approved and endorsed by drug policy experts across the country and here in Cambridge.
Safe Supply and safe consumption sites have been supported by regional and municipal governments for years to combat the opioid crisis in Waterloo region.
Poilievre added that the people making those decisions are the ones that got us into the opioid crisis and they need to be fired.
"We have to stop calling these people experts. They've been making the decisions for the last 10 years, and they've more than doubled the overdose rate," said Poilievre.
"They're self-serving bureaucrats and activists that want more money for them to control and don't want to solve the problem."
The only people Poilievre said he wants to hear from are the police and those who work at treatment centres. He said every treatment worker he talks to goes against what "the public health bureaucracy says."
Despite this claim, many community-based treatment organizations such as Sanguen, the Kitchener CTS site and The AIDS Committee Of Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and Area all support harm reduction and safe supply initiatives.
As the potential next prime minister walked around the factory in Cambridge, he was greeted by smiles and words of support for him and his policies.
The owner of Arrow Engineered Products, James Gandhi said the party leader's politics around helping business thrive is what attracted him to the Conservative Party.
"You feel when you are talking to Pierre this genuine interest in people and he really wants to do better and more than what this current government has done," said Gandhi.
He said the Conservative platform is aimed at helping businesses by cutting crime, reducing housing prices and lowering inflation.
"Because of inflation everything is more; housing, materials, and even our customers are struggling, so to have a leader that understands the pain of the people is refreshing."
While Poilievre may be confident in his policies and sees the support from the younger generation, he said he needs to earn every vote and nothing is for granted.
He added his appeal to youth comes from wanting to bring back the country that their parents enjoyed when the cost of living was cheaper.
In recent polls, Poilievre's conservatives hold a 16 per cent lead over the current liberal government among young voters aged 18 to 29.
"They look at the fact that their parents and grandparents could not only buy a home, but pay it off in seven or eight years in neighborhoods that now most university graduates would never even be able to dream of renting," he said.
"They know that the problem is that big fat, obese government is weighing down the economy and depriving people of the opportunities that Canada used to afford."
The next federal election will take place on or before October 20, 2025.
