Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held a press conference in the House of Commons on Thursday to respond to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to Canadian youth.Poilievre said he watched the speech with interest because of “how much misery and suffering our young people have endured over the last decade of Liberal inflation, crime and chaos.”He said he expected Carney to reverse course on government policy but instead heard “a buffet of broken promises and buzzwords.” Poilievre said Carney talked about “catalyzing this and catalyzing that” and promised to double exports to non-U.S. markets while refusing to support an oil pipeline to the Pacific..“There was the normal repetition of already broken promises with a lot of fancy, million-dollar words,” Poilievre said. “He went on at length about how much worse life is for today’s youth than it was when he was young, and he’s right about that.”Poilievre said this generation of young people cannot afford home ownership and that housing costs have doubled under the Liberal government. He said Canada has “the worst housing inflation in the G7” and that “now is the worst time, probably in the post-war period, to be a young person.”He accused the Liberals of blocking home building, standing in the way of resource projects, and driving inflation through deficit spending. He said young Canadians “are living in their parents’ basement well into their 30s,” while their rent has doubled and their purchasing power has declined. He added that “more of their money goes to taxes than to food, clothing and shelter combined.”.Poilievre linked rising crime to the federal government’s bail policies. He mentioned the case of 29-year-old Savannah Kula, who he said was “murdered by an offender out on Liberal bail.” He said instead of reversing policies, Carney “doubles down on all the policies that caused them,” and that food inflation remains “almost double the Bank of Canada’s target.”He said youth employment numbers are “the worst in a generation” and that high taxes and the temporary foreign worker program are limiting job opportunities for young people. “My message to Canadian youth is this,” Poilievre said. “You have sacrificed enough under this Liberal government. You don’t have to live like this.”Poilievre said a Conservative government would lower income taxes, reduce inflationary spending, and remove bureaucratic barriers to construction and resource development. He said these measures would allow builders to build homes, create jobs for trades workers, and restore public safety by scrapping “Liberal bail.”.“We will lock up serious criminals,” he said. “We will restore the best immigration system in the world that is based on common sense.”Richmond Hill South MP Vincent Neil Ho said young people in his riding have struggled to find work. He said a teenager told him he spent his whole summer looking for a job and could not find one.He said students have told him that “finding a job feels like winning the lottery.” Ho said this situation is “the result of ten years of this Liberal government” and that Carney “decides to double down on the very same disastrous Trudeau-era policies.”.Newmarket–Aurora MP Sandra Cobena shared the story of a young couple in Aurora, Ontario, who she said work five jobs between them but cannot afford a home or start a family. “What Mr. Carney, Prime Minister Carney, has said to them is, well, you’re going to have to sacrifice even more,” she said. Cobena said the couple feel an “impending sense of doom” and that the government is “blind to the ongoing sacrifices that Canadian youth are having to make right now.”When asked about the Liberal government’s proposed bail changes, Poilievre said they do not remove what he called “Liberal bail,” also known as the “principle of restraint,” which requires judges to release an arrested person under the least onerous conditions. He said this allows “serious and rampant offenders” to be released quickly and that the policy should be scrapped..Poilievre said Canada has “the fastest shrinking economy in the G7” and accused Carney of keeping “anti-development laws that block projects in place.” He said Carney has not approved any new resource projects and that “it’s not just that there’s no construction or no permit. It’s that there’s not even a commitment that one day he would support such a thing.”Poilievre said Canada’s biggest net export is oil and gas and that reaching non-U.S. markets requires pipelines to the coast. “Seven months into Mark Carney’s term, he still won’t even tell us if he supports a pipeline to tidewater,” he said. “Other than pixie dust, what he expects to export overseas if he’s going to block the major infrastructure projects that are necessary to get our most valuable resources to the biggest and most lucrative non-American markets.”.He said the government has promised “the fastest growing economy in the G7” but has delivered the opposite. Poilievre said Carney “pretends that he believes in the things that we say, but he never does them.”He ended by saying only the Conservatives would “reduce the cost of government to reduce the cost of living” and “bring in an affordable budget for an affordable Canada.”“Your suffering today is not your fault,” Poilievre said. “It was imposed on you by your Liberal government. But we can change these things and build a brighter future
