Taxes, trades key topics for federal party leaders on first full day of campaign

OTTAWA — Federal party leaders are spending their first full day on the campaign trail talking about taxes, transfers and the trades.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is promising a middle-class tax cut, following a Liberal pledge that involves a smaller reduction to the same tax rate.

Poilievre says he would drop lower the lowest income tax bracket by 2.25 percentage points, compared to a promise Liberal Leader Mark Carney made Sunday for a drop of one percentage point.

“This is a tax cut for everybody who has ever got up early in the morning and work hard to build our country,” Poilievre said at a paper products plant in Brampton, Ont.

In Newfoundland, Carney pledged to not reduce transfers to individuals and provinces, saying they would not be among the potential cuts in a review of government programs aimed at stopping the ballooning of the public service.

Carney is also pledging to release a costed platform, during a stop in Gander, Nfld., a town that famously fed and housed thousands of airline passengers after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Carney said the town epitomizes Canadian values of looking after each other.

“What Gander did, when the world was shaken, is the country we know and love,” he said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh started the day in Montreal, pledging to use suitable federal Crown land to build more than 100,000 rent-controlled homes over a decade.

He is also pledging to train 100,000 people in the skilled trades.

Singh’s bus will be on the road this afternoon to downtown Toronto, with an evening event planned.

The Greater Toronto Area will likely loom large in this election; with so many seats it can make or break a party in a close election.

Since Sunday’s election call, asserting Canada’s sovereignty and economic strength has been a large focus for the three major parties, as the leaders try to promote themselves as the best positioned to handle U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic attacks and threats of annexation.

The election will be held on April 28.