MONTREAL — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre criticized what he called the Liberals’ “woke criminal justice agenda” on Tuesday as he defended his own tough-on-crime promises.
Poilievre accused the Liberals of being soft on crime at a campaign stop in Montreal, after announcing a plan to protect older Canadians from fraud.
“I think, for example, of (the Liberal) woke criminal justice agenda, which releases the same radically violent criminals onto our streets again and again and again,” he said. “Instead of that, we should lock up the criminals.”
Poilievre was asked by The Canadian Press to explain what he meant by past promises to end “woke culture” in the public service and the military.
The Conservative leader has said that Canada’s military would be guided by “a warrior culture, not a woke culture” if he’s elected. His Quebec platform also pledges to “put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal public service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”
When asked to explain some of those promises Tuesday, Poilievre blasted the Liberals on crime and spending, accusing them of doubling the debt and causing skyrocketing inflation through their “woke agenda.”
Poilievre also defended a promise he made Monday to use the notwithstanding clause to pass a law to allow judges to impose consecutive life sentences for multiple murderers. The Supreme Court of Canada struck down consecutive sentencing provisions in 2022, saying the practice was equivalent to cruel and unusual punishment.
Amnesty International Canada on Tuesday called on Poilievre to retract his “troubling” proposal, noting that no federal leader has used the notwithstanding clause in the Charter’s decades-long history.
“To break that precedent would send a dreadful message to Canadians: that it is OK for the government to undermine your rights when it is politically expedient to do so,” wrote Ketty Nivyabandi, the organization’s secretary general for its English-speaking section.
The promise to use the notwithstanding clause was also criticized by two legal experts and Liberal Leader Mark Carney, who called it a “dangerous step” and said it’s a prime minister’s responsibility to defend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On Tuesday, Poilievre fired back at what he called Carney’s “incendiary comments.”
“Yesterday, Mark Carney said it was dangerous to keep multiple murderers in jail for life,” he said. “Mr. Carney, do you know what’s dangerous? Murder is dangerous.”
Most dangerous of all, he said, would be a “a fourth Liberal term of catch-and-release, crime and chaos in our streets.”
Poilievre has proposed a number of crime policies in recent days, including tougher sentences for intimate partner violence and a “three strikes” law that would make people convicted of serious offences ineligible for bail, probation, parole or house arrest.
He continued with that theme Tuesday, making a promise to protect older voters from fraud by punishing banks and telecoms that don’t do enough to prevent it.
Poilievre promised to fine companies up to $5 million if they don’t implement the “latest technology to stop scams” and accused the Liberals of taking no action.
“No mandatory detection, no mandatory reporting, no accountability, even though these tools exist,” Poilievre said of the Liberal government.
The Conservative plan calls on banks and telecoms to implement real-time scam detection on seniors’ accounts. It would require automatic flagging and blocks on suspicious activity -- like robocalling and unusual transactions -- and would impose a 24-hour hold on high-risk transactions for seniors.
It also would require that companies report statistics on fraud prevention -- how many scams are being blocked and how many customers are being reimbursed.
Tuesday’s announcement comes as polls suggest Poilievre is trailing among senior voters -- generally the demographic with the highest turnout in federal elections.
Poilievre cited a recent report by the CBC program Marketplace about an Ontario grandmother who fell victim to fraudsters who used an AI-generated version of her grandson’s voice to ask her for $9,000 in bail money.
Tuesday’s announcement promised one-year mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of fraud worth more than $5,000, three years for fraud worth more than $100,000, and five years for fraud worth $1 million.
The plan also calls for minimum fines of ten times the amount stolen.
“We want to financially cripple the fraudsters to deter their greed,” Poilievre said.
Taking questions from selected reporters, Poilievre was asked whether he would defund the CBC within 100 days of taking office.
While Poilievre has boasted about his plans to defund the public broadcaster -- while maintaining the francophone side, Radio-Canada -- he hasn’t mentioned it much during the campaign, either at press conferences or at his rallies.
“I don’t have a time frame but I’ve already made my position clear on that and it hasn’t changed,” Poilievre said.
“We’re going to defund the CBC and let Canadians enjoy it as a non-profit, self-funded organization -- which is what I’ve said all along -- while protecting services at Radio-Canada.”
Morgan Lowrie, The Associated Press
With files from Nick Murray in Ottawa
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2025.
