By The Canadian Press

Leaders take their campaigns to Western Canada as federal election nears midpoint

Apr 8, 2025 | 2:00 AM

OTTAWA — The leaders of the top three federal parties were campaigning Tuesday in Western Canada, where Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised to crack down on offshore tax loopholes by appointing a tax task force.

The Conservatives said the task force would be asked to make the rules simpler and more fair and would ensure large companies can’t “stash their money in offshore tax havens.”

They also pledged to create a website to “name and shame” the wealthy companies that are dodging taxes. They say that list includes Brookfield, the company that Liberal Leader Mark Carney chaired before he took on the party leadership.

Radio-Canada has reported that Carney led $25 billion worth of green investment funds that were headquartered in Bermuda, a country that’s viewed as global tax haven.

“While you’re double-checking your tax return to avoid a penalty, Carney and his global elite Liberal friends dodge theirs,” Poilievre said.

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He said that under a Conservative government, the Canada Revenue Agency would have “fewer auditors going after charities and small businesses, and more going after international tax evaders.”

Poilievre also promised to expand an existing program to give whistleblowers reporting illegal tax schemes “up to 20 per cent” of recovered funds.

The Conservative announcement followed a promise by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh last week to close loopholes that allow corporations to put money in offshore accounts. Singh said companies would have to provide a “genuine business reason” for having such accounts.

At a press conference, Singh was asked about Poilievre’s announcement and whether he was worried about the Conservatives going after NDP voters.

He didn’t answer directly but said that “more and more Canadians” are rejecting Poilievre’s policies and are also “worried” about Carney.

The NDP is running a distant third in this election and polls indicate the party will lose some of its 24 seats in the House of Commons when Canadians vote on April 28.

Poilievre held a rally in Edmonton on Monday night, where he received an endorsement from Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister from 2006 to 2015.

Poilievre was scheduled to end Tuesday with an evening rally in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

At his event in Vancouver, Carney spoke about his previously-announced housing policy, highlighting an effort to aid Canada’s softwood lumber industry by using more Canadian lumber here to offset the impact of U.S. tariffs.

The Liberals propose doubling the pace of construction to almost 500,000 new homes per year, which would involve public-private co-operation on a scale not seen since the end of the Second World War.

Carney also has pledged to create a new entity, Build Canada Homes, to act as a developer on housing projects and provide more than $25 billion in financing to innovative builders of prefabricated homes.

Speaking at a prefabricated, mass timber housing development in the Vancouver area, Carney pointed to the effect of duties imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The U.S. is again targeting the Canadian forestry industry by more than doubling the duties charged on softwood lumber,” he said.

He said as the U.S. tries to “keep high quality, sustainable Canadian lumber out, we will use more of it here in our plan to double the pace of housing construction in this country over the course of the next 10 years.”

Carney was scheduled to hold an evening rally in Calgary Tuesday, making him the first of the major party leaders to campaign in the city. While the city is considered to be a sea of safe seats for the Conservatives, the Liberals are hoping to add to the single seat they won in Calgary in 2021.

All the leaders were in British Columbia near the start of the third week of the campaign, a battleground province with 43 seats up for grabs.

Poilievre campaigned in the Vancouver area on Monday before heading to Alberta. Carney started his week in Victoria before travelling to the Vancouver region Tuesday, and Singh, who started Monday in Toronto, spent Tuesday campaigning in Vancouver.

When Parliament was dissolved for the election, the seats in B.C. were divided almost evenly among the three parties, with the Liberals and Conservatives each holding 14 and the NDP 12. One seat was vacant but had been held by the NDP until MP Randall Garrison resigned at the end of January due to health issues.

With the election now at the midway point, a new poll suggests most Canadians already have made up their minds about how they’ll vote — 61 per cent of respondents said they’ve made their final decision, while another 37 per cent said they could change their mind.

Sixty-eight per cent of Conservative voters and 61 per cent of Liberal voters said their decision was final, while just 45 per cent of NDP supporters said the same.

If the federal election were held today, 44 per cent of respondents said they would vote Liberal, 37 per cent of respondents said that they’d vote for the Conservatives and eight per cent said they would back the NDP.

The Leger poll, conducted for The Canadian Press, was conducted online and can’t be assigned a margin of error. It surveyed 1,631 people between April 4 and 6.

In Vancouver on Tuesday, Singh announced a plan to limit foreign, corporate and speculative homebuyers. He then set off to join striking workers on a picket line and meet with Stewart Philip, grand chief of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, in Burnaby, B.C.

Singh said he wants to ban foreign buyers from buying homes in Canada and promised an NDP government would close loopholes in the existing rules by barring numbered companies and corporate proxies from purchasing homes. The prohibition would not apply to recreational properties like cottages and cabins.

The Liberals last year extended a ban on foreign residential homebuyers until 2027; Singh said he would make that permanent.

“Homes in Canada should be for you and your family, not for rich investors to get richer,” he said.

The NDP is also pitching a measure meant to prevent house-flipping. The party says it wants to tax as income profits from the sale of a home sold within five years of the seller purchasing it — unless it’s someone’s principal residence.

— With files from David Baxter and Dylan Robertson in Vancouver, and Fakiha Baig and Jack Farrell in Edmonton.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 8, 2025.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press