Poilievre accuses Carney of plagiarism after PM pledges to abolish GST for first-time homebuyers
(UPDATE: March 21 at 7:44 am): Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre has accused Mark Carney of plagiarizing his policy ideas after the prime minister announced his intention to scrap the GST first-time purchases of homes that sell for up to $1 million.
Poilievre – announcing a plan in Ottawa this morning to expand training halls to create "more boots, less suits" in the Canadian labour market – said he expects Carney will soon pilfer today's policy announcement, too.
Only months ago, Liberals voted unanimously against my idea of taking the GST off new homes.
Now—a few days before calling an election — they plagiarize me again.
Liberals will never do this policy. They are just trying to trick people into giving them a fourth term.
Writing on X yesterday, he highlighted that the Liberals had recently "voted unanimously against" his proposal that GST be removed from new home purchases.
"Now—a few days before calling an election — they plagiarize me again," he said.
Carney said in Edmonton yesterday that his GST policy will help young people "realize the dream of homeownership."
He added that he'll be announcing more housing policies "shortly."
(Original story: March 20 at 12:58 am): Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to abolish the GST for first-time homebuyers on properties costing a million dollars or less.
He said the policy – almost identical to one announced by Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre last fall – will help address housing shortages across Canada.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, the GST cut will save homebuyers up to $50,000 and enable “more young people and families to enter the housing market and realize the dream of homeownership.”
“Our government is laser-focused on lowering costs for Canadians and making homeownership a reality,” said Carney, adding the GST cut will “spur housing construction across the country.”
“We will announce a series of new measures to increase housing supply shortly. It’s time for focused action to solve the housing crisis, and it’s time to build a Canada you can afford.”
Carney announced the policy today in Edmonton, a city he praised for its efforts to keep housing affordable.
She later released a statement about the meeting that suggested she was far from pleased with the prime minister.
Smith wrote: “We had a very frank discussion in which I made it clear that Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we've been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years.”
Much of her criticism of Carney and the Liberals related to her view that Ottawa has hobbled Alberta’s natural resources sector and that, as a consequence, Canada is now facing a national unity crisis.
At his request, I met with Prime Minister Mark Carney @MarkJCarney today. We had a very frank discussion in which I made it clear that Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we've been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years.
During the press conference in Edmonton, however, Carney insisted he was committed to supporting Canada's energy producers.
He said he'll be speaking with premiers tomorrow about getting "pipelines built across this country so that we can displace imports of foreign oil" and "building out the energy infrastructure more broadly here in Alberta."
Another topic under discussion will be "building energy corridors and trade corridors, including potentially up from here through to Nunavut so we have additional deepwater ports and opportunities there."
He added: "The commitment is to deliver those projects ... that we agree are national priorities, and then the federal government, using all of its power ... in order to accelerate delivering those projects."
Canada, he said, must "do things that had not been imagined or had not been thought possible at a speed we haven't seen before, and that's the nature of the time."
Carney was also asked to confirm whether he is, as reported, intending to call an election on Sunday, but remained coy in his answer, stressing that the first person to know will be the governor general.
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