February 9, 2025
O’Toole releases platform promising reduced emissions, foreign competition for airlines and telecoms
The platform does not propose a timeframe for balancing the budget, but O'Toole says he will review both taxes and spending to determine how to get there.
The platform does not propose a timeframe for balancing the budget, but O’Toole says he will review both taxes and spending to determine how to get there.

OTTAWA — Conservative leadership contender Erin O’Toole is set to release a 50-page policy platform Wednesday that includes promises to achieve net-zero emissions in the oil and gas sector, allow foreign competition for airlines and wireless telecom companies, and to impose Magnitsky Act sanctions on senior Chinese officials if Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig remain in custody.

The platform, of which the National Post received an advance copy, also outlines earlier promises including to eliminate funding for CBC’s digital operations, privatize English-language CBC TV, and to invoke the notwithstanding clause to bring back mandatory minimum sentences for serious crimes including murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and trafficking illegal guns.

The platform is not costed, meaning its full impact on the budget isn’t known. It does not propose a timeframe for balancing the budget, but O’Toole says he will review both taxes and spending to determine how to get there, and will have a “Pay-as-You-Go rule, enshrined in law, requiring that for each dollar in new spending, the government finds a dollar in savings.”

“Conservatives, in recent years, have failed to explain to Canadians the importance of balancing the budget,” the document says, promising to “not be afraid to explain to Canadians why this is necessary.”

“The next few years will not be easy ones,” it says. “Our government has borrowed hundreds of billions to get through the crisis. The economy, and therefore government revenue, will take time to recover even with the right policies.”

[Interesting Read]