Ahead of an important fiscal update this week, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is demanding Prime Minister Mark Carney cap the federal deficit at $31 billion, in part by eliminating big ticket items like a major rail project and the gun buyback program.

“We should have no deficit,” Poilievre wrote in a letter to Carney. “And if I were Prime Minister right now, we would be on track to achieving that. But your Liberal government has made that impossible for this year.”

The $31 billion cap Poilievre proposes is what the former Trudeau government projected the deficit to be for the 2026-27 fiscal year when it tabled the 2024 fall economic update.

  • kbal@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    the high-speed rail, the gun buyback program, external consultants, the federal bureaucracy, and foreign aid

    If we vote hard enough can we get an opposition leader who attacks the government for the stupidly wasteful things they do — i.e. the gun buyback and consultants — and doesn’t just reject every single normal Canadian thing including building trains and funding the CBC?

    • LoveCanada@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      How is building a high speed rail between two cities in eastern Canada, that are already serviced by faster air service, a ‘nation building’ project? Especially when its projected to cost 90 BILLION dollars which will balloon to 180 BILLION dollars when its done and never actually make money? Thats a very typical Liberal grift. Send out contracts, spend a couple billion on preliminaries, cancel the whole fiasco, and the purpose is fulfilled. Not everyone who watched the Green Slush Fund, ArriveScam, Northvolt, Medicago and the billions wasted for ‘covid wage funding’ is blind. We’re not even going to mention the Finance Minister’s conflict of interest in the project as his wife would be a direct beneficiary. Wake up and smell the coffee.

    • No_Maines_Land@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      While I believe the opposition party should challenge everything, that doesn’t mean attacking everything.

      Other ways to challange:

      This bill is good, but have you considered adding/removing X.

      Why has Canada gone Y direction when we have seen outcome Z from doing Y internationally.

      Why is Canada going Y direction when we have also seen internationals do W.