TORONTO – Relaunching the economy, supporting growth, strengthening anti-Covid measures, increasing funds for Health. These are the main measures contained in the Conservative Party’s electoral platform presented today by Tory leader Erin O’Toole. It is a substantial 160-page document, with which O’Toole tries to lay the foundations to reach that slice of the electorate not satisfied with the work done by the outgoing prime minister during the pandemic. 

The Conservative leader, during a press conference, reiterated how the party is ready for the turning point. “Probably – he said – you have noticed that in our program there are ideas that you have never heard before from conservatives like me. The time has come for conservatives to seriously address issues such as inequality, because it is becoming a dramatic problem across the country.” Inequality – this is the reasoning of O’Toole, which has also been fueled by the crisis caused by Covid and the measures, judged insufficient, approved by the liberal government.

The Tory leader is first and foremost intent on eliminating Trudeau’s national plan for nurseries: the funds invested will instead be directed directly to families. In the event that the Conservatives were to win the election, the new government would increase federal funds allocated to the provinces for the health sector: growth would be 6 percent compared to the current rate, which is about $60 billion for the next ten years.

One of the objectives present in the electoral platform is to reach the turning point on the employment front: to recover all the jobs lost during the pandemic and to encourage new hires.

There is also room for investment, with the proposal for tax reductions of 25 percent up to 100 thousand dollars for Canadians who will invest in small businesses within two years. Among the proposed measures also that of the GST Holiday, that is, the one-month stop for shops to pay the federal sales tax.

Trudeau, on the other hand, kicked off his election campaign in Longueuil, Quebec, while in the afternoon he held an election rally in Cobourg. The outgoing prime minister underlined the achievements of his executive over the past six years and strongly defended government action during the pandemic. “The last 17 months – he underlined – have been as no one could ever have imagined. And now we wonder what the next 17 months, or 17 years, will be like. We are facing a global pandemic, a global recession, a global climate crisis that is causing fires and flooding around the world.”

According to the liberal leader, there is still much to be done in the fight against Cvoid-19, in the creation of the necessary measures to contain the pandemic and in the planning of concrete proposals to revive the economy so hard hit by the pandemic and support growth and jobs. A titanic task, made all the more difficult by the fact that until now a minority government was in office.

Trudeau therefore aims to get to the majority of seats. “We – he concluded – believe that the most important responsibility of the government is to ensure the safety of Canadians and their prosperity. And that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”

Jagmeet Singh decided to start the election campaign from Toronto. And it did so by sending a clear message to the outgoing prime minister: Canada must change its support policies, helping the less well-off sections of the population.

The neo-democratic leader today promised that, in case of victory, he will ask for the return of the funds of the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), received from the executives of companies during the pandemic on which, however, there has been no capillary control over the real use. At the same time, Singh is committed to targeting these funds directly to workers affected by the Covid crisis. “Canadians – he said – have struggled to pay their bills and maintain a roof over them and now the pandemic has worsened the situation. We demand that CEOs pay what they are due so that Canadian families do not have to pay the full price of the pandemic”.