ADAMS: From Blue Skies to Smoke Screens: The Hollow Shift from O'Toole to Poilievre
Poilievre’s Platform Is a Budgetary Joke, a Social Disaster, and a Last-Minute Photo Dump
Pierre and Ana Poilievre sit with two seniors, chatting and smiling while gathered around a colourful Canada map puzzle. Photo credit: Conservative Party Platform 2025
For years, the Poilievre Conservatives have been absolutely insufferable about the carbon tax. Every chance they got, it was "AXE THE TAX" this, "end the woke energy agenda" that. They hijacked Question Period, voted down anything that resembled public good, and acted like repealing the tax was going to personally bring down the cost of avocados. All of this without a proper election platform. Not one. Not in 2023, not in 2024. Just a vague policy declaration that reads like a newsletter from your local libertarian Facebook group.
Erin O'Toole, for all his faults, had a platform. Canada’s Recovery Plan (2021) was solid. I actually kinda liked it. Still do. O’Toole had a detailed jobs plan, actual ideas for childcare and mental health, and at least a basic respect for how governing works. He said things like, "It’s time for Conservatives to take inequality seriously." That’s a man who’d at least skimmed a policy brief. It was the last time the Conservative Party even attempted to sound like adults. It was a roadmap. This, however? It's a billboard.
Poilievre ghosted us for over a year. Then, outta nowhere, on April 22, 2025, the 2025 platform drops. A week before the election. After advanced polls closed. Even the Canadian Future Party, a literal startup party, managed beat them to the punch and release their platform more than a week ago earlier. What the hell took so long?
Even though the Conservatives clearly couldn’t be bothered to pitch to undecided voters until the last advanced poll shut down and the lights were flickering, I figured—hell, let’s give their platform a fair shot. How bad could it be?
Spoiler alert: it’s a flaming pile of nothing.
Axe the Tax. Axe Everything Else, Too.
Let me make this as clear as possible: nothing about this platform is fiscally conservative. Not even a little. The numbers don’t line up. The spending promises contradict the supposed cuts. And the cuts they do propose are based less on real fiscal discipline, and more on fantasy figures and ideological grudges. This is not the return of the penny-pinching Conservative, but instead, a new flavor of reckless.
Let’s start with the obvious. The Poilievre platform kicks off with the line: “Axe the tax: End Trudeau’s carbon tax on everything, for everyone, for good” (p. 5). Cool story. Except most of it’s already been repealed since mid-March. The home heating exemption? Already in place. Hell, some provinces have been shielded from the worst of it forever at this point. And here’s the twist: the legal authority for the carbon pricing framework actually came from legislation introduced under Stephen Harper. You wanna axe the Harper-era law? Go for it, Pierre. Let’s see that energy.
And then there’s the fake math. They claim axing the EV mandate will somehow net $10 billion over three years. The platform literally says it’ll bring in $5.1 billion annually by 2028–29 (p. 26). What is that based on? Nothing. No modelling. No auditor review. Just like the $3.1 billion they claim they’ll save by defunding “hostile foreign regimes” and the CBC (p. 27). It’s the budgetary equivalent of "trust me bro."
Even with all these cuts, they’re still projecting a $31.4 billion deficit in 2025-26, tapering to $14.1 billion in 2028-29 (p. 27). And you’re telling me this is supposed to be a fiscally conservative platform? They're literally saying, "We’ll cut the government, but also—surprise—we’ll still run a huge deficit."
My high school’s ‘dealer’ contradicted himself less while lying to the police for giving substances to children, and watching him lie was like watching someone juggle knives while standing in gasoline. Poilievre wants to pass a one-for-one spending law where every new dollar spent has to be matched with a dollar cut (p. 5), but also want to spend billions on military bases, Arctic infrastructure, 2,000 new CBSA agents, northern roads, a national energy corridor, and a whole bureaucracy to rank cities based on housing performance. You can’t scream “cut the red tape!” while building new tape dispensers in every ministry.
Their crime policy? A total overstep.
The "Three Strikes You’re Out" policy (p. 11) promises life in prison for “repeat violent offenders.” But violent crime is already complex and legally defined. What counts as “violent”? What gets swept into that net? The federal government doesn’t sentence people—judges do. This would upend discretion, fairness, and due process. It’s reactive, authoritarian policy dressed up as “common sense.” And let’s not kid ourselves: policies like this always hit hardest against racialized and low-income communities. They never catch the white-collar abusers or the hedge fund grifters. Just people with fewer resources and less privilege. If a politician's go-to move is “let’s just override the Charter,” that’s a walking red flag. Especially when they’re targeting the justice system. Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedom guarantees us the right to life, liberty, and security of the person—unless it’s taken away in line with fundamental justice. Section 11 backs that up with due process rights. That’s the spine of Canadian law. You don’t get to wipe your ass with the Constitution just because the courts won’t rubber-stamp your tough guy cosplay.
Forget Dog-Whistling. This is a Foghorn.
The Conservatives have committed to repealing Directive 100 (p. 11), which ensures that federal inmates are placed in facilities consistent with their gender identity. In plain terms: they want to force trans women into men’s prisons. That’s not about safety. That’s not about fairness. That’s institutionalized cruelty, plain and simple.
It’s not a standalone policy, either. It’s part of a larger platform-wide silence on LGBTQ+ rights. There’s no mention of protections. No mention of inclusion. No strategy for ending hate crimes. Just... nothing. As if queer people don’t exist. As if we aren’t citizens. And guess what? It’s wildly unpopular. Most Canadians don’t buy the premise of transphobic legislation. They know that this kind of policy requires a deep, regressive level of misogyny to even make sense. And they’re not signing up for it.
As for addiction and homelessness? They want to “shut down tent cities” (p. 11), scrap “safe supply” (p. 19), and throw people into court-mandated rehab. They call it “compassionate intervention.” It’s forced treatment in all but name. There’s no talk of supportive housing. No long-term recovery funding. No understanding of the trauma that leads to substance use in the first place. Just criminalization. Just cops.
And this from the guy who oversaw housing policy while the affordability crisis exploded. Let’s be specific: under Poilievre’s watch as Stephen Harper’s housing minister, 800,000 affordable homes were sold off to private investors, and in that same timeframe? Only six new affordable homes were built. That is not a typo. Six. And now we’re supposed to believe he’s suddenly the champion of renters, the warrior for the working class? I simply do not believe him. He’s not here to fix the housing crisis—he’s here to finish what he started: turning homes into investment portfolios and cities into playgrounds for hedge funds. The same guy who helped create the housing mess now wants to clean it up with handcuffs? Give me a break.
O’Toole vs. Poilievre: From Policy to Populism
Let me say this again: I actually liked Erin O’Toole’s 2021 platform. It had structure. It had coherence. He proposed the “Canada Job Surge Plan” He had a real mental health strategy. He wanted to support small businesses with actual loans, not TikTok clips. He even supported child care in the form of a refundable tax credit. He didn’t shy away from climate policy either, proposing the very innovative idea of replacing the Carbon Tax with a “Carbon Savings Account.” It was the last gasp of adult conservatism in Canada. O’Toole understood the assignment. Poilievre skipped the class. Compare that to what we got now: 30 pages, 1/3 of which being glossy stock photos of Pierre looking pensive in plaid, like a real estate agent’s campaign flyer crashed into a Reddit thread. The substance isn’t just weak—it’s non existent.
The Bottom Line
Let’s call it like it is: a reactionary wish list wrapped in a busted calculator. The numbers don’t add up. The social policy is a regression. The timing is laughable. It’s six days before the election, and we’re just now getting a glimpse of the “vision”? Come on. This document will convince exactly zero new voters. If you weren’t riding the Conservative train before, this brochure full of Pierre Poilievre glamour shots isn’t gonna win you over. And for socially progressive Canadians—especially young people and queer folks? This is just more proof that the Poilievre Conservatives don’t want your vote. They want your silence.
This isn’t a plan. It’s cosplay. And the grown-ups clearly left the building.
The later and later that the platforms come out, the more and more Canadian politics turns into retail politics. Poilievre's moves are nothing more than performance art. You can tell that the CPC plan was done by MAGA-adjacent members of the conservative movement. Hell, the "three strikes" law was VERY POPULAR in the US in the 1990s, and states like Florida implemented it.