Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre at a campaign stop at a Fruiticana grocery store in Surrey, B.C., on April 20.Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
Pierre Poilievre said a Conservative government would cut government spending on consultants by $10-billion annually as he contrasted his own spending plans against those of Liberal Leader Mark Carney.
The Conservatives have yet to release their full platform, but Mr. Poilievre has begun in recent days to attach dollar figures to his ideas. While he has long promised to cut government spending on consultants, Sunday was the first time he pinned a number to how much he’d seek to recoup for government coffers.
Mr. Poilievre framed the promise as cutting an inflation tax, arguing that government spending on outside support is a driver of inflation.
He sought to illustrate the point by grabbing a mesh plastic bag of red onions off the shelf of the Surrey, B.C. grocery store that played host to his early-morning event.
The use of a prop to explain the impact of inflation is a hallmark of his political style. Mr. Poilievre’s supporters at the event, including a few schoolchildren, nodded along as he explained that inflation means a fixed supply of goods – such as the onions – get more expensive if there’s more money circulating in the system.
“We cannot allow government overspending to drive up the cost of the things that we buy, or else our people will be priced out of the goods they need,” he said.
Mr. Poilievre also said his plan to speed up natural-resource development could bring in $70-billion in revenue for the federal government over five years, a figure he for the first time attributed to calculations from Philip Cross, a former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada, and Tim Sargent, a former associate deputy minister at Finance Canada.
Mr. Cross told The Globe and Mail that he did not directly provide the Poilievre campaign with those numbers, though the campaign did consult with him about the economic potential of the natural-resources sector.
But, Mr. Cross said, the number “seems more than reachable and is, if anything, an underestimate given the booming conditions in mining.”
The impact of the U.S. tariffs and the deal President Donald Trump has struck with Ukraine over critical minerals make it difficult to reach revenue projections, Mr. Cross said.
The Globe asked the Conservative campaign for the source of the $70-billion figure and they pointed to Mr. Sargent.
He could not be reached for comment.
The Liberals laid out a policy and fiscal road map on Saturday that relies on deficits and $28-billion in spending cuts over four years to fund their campaign promises, an approach that Mr. Poilievre criticized.
“Mark Carney is even more costly than Justin Trudeau,” Mr. Poilievre said, referring to the deficit spending of the Liberal government under Mr. Trudeau.
“You will have out-of-control inflation, if the Liberals get a fourth term. We need a change,” he said.
What you need to know about the Liberal and NDP election platforms
Mr. Poilievre did not provide a dollar figure Sunday for how much a Conservative government would end up spending on consultants, with his cuts. The campaign said the figure is based on costing from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The PBO’s costing will be released along with their platform, the campaign said.
He has previously claimed that the government spends $21-billion a year on consultants. However, the actual amount that Ottawa spends each year on management consultants is only a small fraction of that amount.
What Mr. Poilievre has appeared to be referencing in the past is the roughly $21-billion spent on “professional and special services,” a broad category of spending that includes consultants, but also other types of outsourced help including lawyers, architects, training and maintenance.
The amount the government spent specifically on management consulting services was $837.8-million in the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Mr. Poilievre has been campaigning for the past two days in the Vancouver area, and has focused both on his fiscal message but also his promise to take a tougher approach than the Liberal government to crack down on crime.
On Sunday, he declined to say whether a Conservative government would repeal the current national freeze on the sale or transfer of handguns, a centrepiece of the Liberal government’s firearms policy.
Mr. Poilievre noted that despite the freeze on the sale or transfer of handguns, they are still legal to use. All the Liberals have achieved with their approach is to “prevent off-duty police officers and military veterans from practicing their craft without going after the criminals who caused the crime,” he said.
With a report from Bill Curry and Kathryn Helmore