Canada First—For A Change – The following is a transcript of the Hon. Pierre Poilievre’s remarks from March 23rd, 2025. These remarks have been edited for length. Check against delivery.

OTTAWA – POLITICS – Today, the Liberals are asking for a fourth term in power, after swapping Justin Trudeau for his economic advisor and handpicked successor, Mark Carney.

After the lost Liberal decade, the question is whether Canadians can afford a fourth term of out-of-touch Liberals, inflating housing and food costs, unleashing crime, ruining immigration, hiking taxes, blocking resource jobs and making our economy weak and reliant on the U.S.?

Or is it time to put Canada First—FOR A CHANGE, with a new Conservative government that will axe taxes, build homes, cut waste, lock-up criminals, secure our borders and unleash our resources to bring home our jobs and stand up to Trump from a position of strength?

Now, I know many people are anxious and angry about the outrageous attacks that President Trump has made against our country. You worry about the cost of his unjust tariffs on your jobs and threats to our sovereignty. Our challenge now is to turn that anger and anxiety into action.

We must become strong, self-reliant and stand on our own feet—to stand up to the Americans. We will stare down this unprovoked threat with steely resolve, because, be assured, we will never be part of the United States and we will never ever give up our sovereignty and our freedom.

I will protect Canada. And I will always put our country first.

But before I tell you how, let me tell you why.

This country has given me everything. Nowhere else would my story be possible.

I was born to a 16-year-old single mom, who put me up for adoption to two schoolteachers. They taught me that the promise of Canada was that anyone from anywhere can achieve anything.

This country kept that promise to me. Now I want to restore that promise for all Canadians, so hard work again gets everyone a great life in a beautiful house on a safe street under our proud flag.

Because after the lost Liberal decade, that promise is broken. Liberal taxes drove food prices up 37% faster in Canada than in the U.S.

Single moms go to bed hungry worried about how they will feed their children in the morning, and seniors choose between eating and heating. Housing costs have doubled, as Liberals inflated demand with out-of-control immigration and money printing, and blocked homebuilding with bureaucracy—so for the first time in our history young Canadians can’t imagine affording their own place to live.

Open borders and Liberal crime and drug laws unleashed violence, disorder, and deadly overdoses. Ten years of Liberals hiking taxes and blocking resource projects gave Canada the worst growth in the G7 and sent a half-trillion dollars of Canadian investment to the U.S. ALL THAT, BEFORE THE TRUMP TARIFFS. Their radical post-national, borderless, globalist ideology has divided and weakened our country.

Now, desperate for a fourth term, the Liberals have swapped Justin Trudeau for his economic advisor and hand-picked successor, Mark Carney. But a Liberal is a Liberal is a Liberal. It’s still the same old Liberal MPs, same Liberal ministers, same Liberal advisors, same Liberal elites and same Liberal broken promises of the last 10 years.

We cannot afford another lost Liberal decade. We need to put Canada First—for a change, with a new Conservative Government to axe taxes, reward work, unleash entrepreneurs, harvest our resources, make things here, build homes for our youth, secure our borders, rebuild our military, honour our history and proudly raise our flag.

It starts with a big Bring It Home Tax Cut on work, homes, energy and investment. Lower taxes for a change to bring home businesses and jobs and let Canadians bring home more of their paycheques.

That starts with axing the carbon tax—a tax that the Liberals, with Mr. Carney’s enthusiastic support, have imposed and increased for seven years; a tax that is still in law, despite the government hiding it from gas stations for 30 days leading up to the election; a tax they will bring back bigger than ever before if re-elected.

On this point, Mr. Carney and Mr. Trump agree. They both want to tax Canadian industry—Carney’s carbon tax and Trump’s tariffs will send our jobs south.

But I won’t let that happen. A new Conservative government will fully repeal the Liberal carbon tax law and axe the tax for everything, for everyone, for real, for good, for a change.

We will also axe the sales tax on new homes and incentivize municipalities to speed up permits, free up land and cut building taxes to restore the dream of homeownership.

We will bring home our resource jobs—for a change. That means repealing the Liberal No-New-Pipelines Law C-69, lifting the Liberal cap on energy that Carney said he will keep, and quickly approving LNG plants, pipelines, mines, and major projects. New Canada First Shovel Ready Zones will pre-permit big projects, so industry can stop filling out paperwork and start building now.

With a new national pipeline—like the one the Liberals blocked a few years back—we could send prairie oil to the Maritimes and over the Atlantic to break Europe’s dependence on Putin while we break our dependence on the United States.

We will knock down interprovincial trade barriers creating one open free market economy. Moving more goods, services, resources and people across the country will bring it home and bring us together as a country.

We will restore the promise of safe communities by stopping the crime—for a change. That means repealing the Liberal catch-and-release laws and imposing mandatory jail time for repeat offenders, banning hard drugs and offering generous recovery treatment to bring our loved ones home drug-free.

We will cap immigration, stop the radical and dangerous Liberal Century Initiative that would balloon Canada’s population to 100 million people, more than doubling the population of our cities during a housing crisis. We will keep out and deport criminals, stop fraud and crack down on bogus refugee claims. On immigration, like everything else, we will put Canada First. For a change.

We will rebuild our military for a change with new ice breakers, a new arctic base, more troops, and better support for our veterans.

Our troops and veterans inspire the best of what is Canada. They also remind us that we are a tough, rugged, strong, hearty people. We do not go looking for a fight. But we are always ready if one comes looking for us.

None of this will be easy. But making and defending Canada was not easy. And with change there is hope.

So I say: To the mother struggling to afford groceries, change is on the way.

To the 35-year-old who wants to move out of mom’s basement, buy a home and start a family, hope is on the way.

For the seniors, choosing between heating and eating, and for everyone who wonders what happened to the Canada they knew and love, hope and change are on the way.

A new Conservative government will restore the Canadian promise that the Liberals broke. The promise that anyone from anywhere can achieve anything—That hard work gets you a great life, in a beautiful house, on a safe street, wrapped in the protective arms of a solid border, defended by brave soldiers under our proud flag.

To preserve that flag and its promise we must work together, fight together and win together.

For our people.

For our land.

For our home. For Canada First – For a change.

Let’s bring it home.