Poilievre rails against Trudeau, gun ban, in brief North Bay visit

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre continued his swing of Northern Ontario last night in North Bay.

He spoke at the Best Western in front of an estimated 550 enthusiastic supporters armed with signs like Axe the Tax, Bring Home Lower Prices, Common Sense and Protect Hunters.

He says people's lives are falling apart.

"I was in the Sault the other day and a carpenter told me he's living in his car because the rent rose too fast. The next day in Sudbury I heard a tradesman tell me he was homeless because he got rent-evicted because rent prices have doubled after eight years of Justin Trudeau," said Poilievre.

He says the carbon tax doesn't change behaviour because it punishes people for doing what they must do.

"If you live in North Bay you need a car or a truck because you need to travel long distances over snowy and dangerous roads and a high tax won't change that.  You have to heat your home in the winter in North Bay and paying the carbon tax won't change that either."

He says instead of taxing people his solution is to lower the cost of environmental alternatives like speeding up approval for nuclear and hydroelectric power and carbon capture and storage.

Poilievre says there's a business case for at-home projects like the Ring of Fire.

He says he will repeal the anti-energy law known as C-69 Bill which proposes to replace the National Energy Board Act with the Canadian Energy Regulator (CER) Act

He claims the government wants to ban hunting rifles.

"They published 300 pages of rifles they wanted to ban. But we stood up and stopped some of the bans. BB guns, paintball guns and Airsoft guns are banned, as though that’s the cause of crime in this country. It's insane. Hunters are the least likely to commit a crime with a gun."

Poilievre says since Justin Trudeau took office, total violent crimes are up by 39 per cent, homicides up 43 per cent and sex crimes against children up by 126 per cent.

He says he will end the "gun grab" and will bolster the border and keep illegal guns and drugs out of the country.

Poilievre says he will repeal C-11 and C-18, the federal legislation that prevents Canadian news articles from being seen on the internet.

"I think of North Korea, not Canada. The government is passing laws that make news articles vanish. Manipulating algorithms to determine what shows up in your news feed so you'll only see what the government wants you to see.  According to the top experts in internet technology, only China, which Trudeau admires, North Korea and Cuba have these types of laws in place,".

Poiievre's speech was stopped for a few minutes as someone appeared to have fainted but got up with help from other attendees.