The federal Liberals and NDP both released their costed campaign platforms Saturday as Elections Canada reported record turnout in the first day of advanced polls.
Nearly two million people showed up to cast a ballot on Friday, the first of four days for advanced voting in the federal election.
Elections Canada said in a social media post it will be making adjustments over the coming days to handle the high traffic after many voters were met with long lineups at polling stations.
Almost 5.8 million voters turned out for advanced polls in the last federal election in 2021, which was up more than 18 per cent from figures in 2019.
This year’s four advanced voting days land over the April long weekend and come to an end on Monday, one week before the general election date of April 28.
With just over a week left before election day, Liberal Leader Mark Carney and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh published documents on Saturday outlining their full campaign commitments and what they say they’ll cost.
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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who was campaigning in Richmond, B.C. Saturday, said his full platform will come soon, but said “95 per cent” of it has already been announced.
Carney rolled out the party’s campaign commitments in Whitby, Ont., one of several battleground ridings in the seat-rich Greater Toronto Area.
The platform pledges billions in new spending as Carney eyes attracting and stimulating private-sector investment amid the global economic crisis prompted by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“Governments must lead and catalyze private sector investments,” Carney said. “The core of this platform is investing, and investing here at home is going to build out.”
The Liberal platform includes $35.2 billion in new spending over the next year, and $129 billion over the next four years.
The spending is heavily focused on building, including in defence, housing and trade infrastructure such as ports and highways.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh released his own platform in Burnaby, B.C., where his own riding is located. The NDP document forecasts a net increase to the federal deficit of $48 billion over four years, a tally that builds in large offsets from a new tax on the “super rich.”
Singh’s wealth tax would apply to people with holdings over $10 million, and the party says it would generate more than $22 billion a year.
“No nurse, no teacher, no tradesperson should pay more than a billionaire flipping stocks,” Singh said, before heading to a rally in Victoria later Saturday.
B.C. is critical ground for the NDP, home to 13 of the 25 seats it won in 2021. Polling aggregator 338Canada.com says right now just one of those seats is a possible win for the NDP, with the Liberals set to scoop up as many as eight of them and the Conservatives as many as five.
Poilievre was campaigning in Richmond, the city of about 200,000 people just outside Vancouver. Nearly 60 per cent of residents cited East Asian as their ethnicity in the last census.
The Liberals won the two seats in Richmond in 2021, but the margins are close and the seats are both in contention for the Conservatives in this match up.
Poilievre spent most of his speech criticizing the Liberal platform for being too expensive, calling it “shocking.”
“We now know that life will get even more expensive if the Liberals get that fourth term,” he said.
He also announced a plan to allow judges to order mandatory drug treatment for certain prisoners to access parole. He said it is compassionate for judges to allow those with small quantities of drugs to seek drug treatment instead of jail, but those with more serious sentences would need to serve their full term behind bars if they don’t undertake treatment.
“This policy is not about punishment; it’s about redemption,” he said.
Carney is focusing Saturday’s campaign efforts in southern Ontario, completing a whistle stop in Newcastle before holding a rally in Peterborough, where the Liberals seek to unseat incumbent Conservative Michelle Ferreri.
She won in 2021 by several thousand votes, but polls have suggested a closer contest this time. A third party group registered with Elections Canada to try and unseat Ferreri, under the name No More MP Ferreri. It appears to be the only one of 93 third party groups registered that specifically targets one candidate.
Advance polls continue through Monday, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. local time.
