Poilievre blasts Carney for failing to fulfill campaign promises

Poilievre blasted Carney for botching a trade deal and failing to deliver on key campaign promises, hours after Carney announced Canada would drop most counter tariffs on U.S. goods.

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre blasted Prime Minister Mark Carney for botching a trade deal and failing to deliver on key campaign promises, hours after Carney announced Canada would drop most counter tariffs on U.S. goods.

Following a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, Carney announced Friday that Canada would drop its 25 per cent tariff on items such as orange juice, wine, clothing and motorcycle products originally targeted by the Liberal government at the beginning of the year.

Poilievre told reporters in Ottawa that he would have preferred to see Canada receive something in return, ideally a freer trade agreement between the two countries, but instead he said Carney capitulated with no concessions from the U.S.

“I was happy to hear that he got the president on the phone. I know that Mr. Carney has been trying to do that now for about a month, and today, the President accepted his call, and the Prime Minister took the opportunity to make a series of very generous concessions to President Trump,” Poilievre said. “I was expecting that when the call was reported, that we’d find that President Trump had given us something in return, that Mr. Carney being the negotiator he promised he would be, that he would get something after giving something.”

He said the latest round of dropped counter-tariffs added to a growing list of capitulations from the prime minister, despite his foremost pledge during the campaign being that he would fight Trump and his tariffs as an “elbows up” prime minister.

“His elbows have mysteriously gone missing, and this call follows on other concessions. He promised during the campaign he would have dollar for dollar retaliation. He pulled that back. He made concessions on the military while getting nothing in return,” Poilievre said. “He pulled back on his digital services tax, a terrible tax, but you’d think he’d get something in return for it, nothing, and today, he removed even almost all of the tariffs on the United States and got none lifted from Canada.”

He also noted a lack of country-building projects, which Carney pledged he would deliver, as well as issues with crime, safety and immigration. Poilievre added that Canada gave a billion-dollar loan to Beijing to build ships, money he argued could have been spent on Canadian workers, especially while China imposes its own tariffs on Canada.

“Mr. Carney, capitulations would be laughable if they weren’t so tragic, they will harm our farmers, our workers, our people. More importantly, from his point of view, they are a broken promise. They are exactly the opposite of what Mr. Carney ran on,” Poilievre said. “His signature promise in the last election was that he was going to put elbows up, negotiate a win and match American tariffs….he’s not thrown one elbow since he took office, except at our own workers.”

He noted Carney is nowhere closer to increasing the supply of homes and dropping their prices or “building Canada,” and all of the “anti-resource laws” that make natural resource projects “impossible” remain in place.

“He was going to build more and at faster speeds than ever before….he’s bragging that he’s close to setting up a construction office of bureaucrats who don’t swing hammers or operate heavy machinery but sit in front of computer screens in Ottawa department buildings,” Poilievre said. “Not one pipeline has been identified, not one LNG plant, not one nuclear plant, not one hydroelectricity dam, not one major project has been identified, let alone approved in the 160 days since he took office.”

Poilievre said Carney should adopt Conservative ideas and that he is willing to work with the Liberals to address these issues, setting partisanship aside.

When asked about Carney’s statement that Canada has the world’s best trade agreement with the U.S., Poilievre responded that in practice, Canada is the country most affected by U.S. tariffs.

“Well, most countries have a better deal in reality, because none of them have the same dependency on the American economy we do,” Poilievre said. “Any small tariff on Canada, any amount cut by the U.S., has an outsized effect, because…more than 20% of our economy is exports to the U.S., which means that we are the most dependent country on the United States, and any tariff at all will have more impact on our country than it does anywhere in the world.”