Trudeau first congratulated Poilievre for winning his party’s leadership in a recent speech before the first full caucus meeting of the three-day retreat for Liberal MPs.
Then he threw down the gauntlet.
When he was surrounded by over 150 Liberal MPs, he said: “Now is not the time for politicians to exploit fears and to pit people one against the other.
“Buzzwords, dog whistles and careless attacks don’t add up to a plan for Canadians. Attacking the institutions that make our society fair, safe and free is not responsible leadership.”
During the leadership campaign, Poilievre criticized the Bank of Canada for shying away from its responsibility and allowing itself to be an “ATM” which funds Trudeau’s spending habit. Also, he said that if he became the Prime Minister, he would sack Bank of Canada Governor, Tiff Macklem.
It should be recalled that Poilievre revealed last winter that he was a student of cryptocurrencies and encouraged Canadians to invest in Bitcoin as it could allow them to “opt-out” of inflation.
In his speech, Trudeau said: “Telling people they can opt out of inflation by investing their savings in volatile cryptocurrencies is not responsible leadership. By the way, anyone who followed that advice would have seen their life savings destroyed.”
Also, Poilievre blames Trudeau for Canada’s inflation and called it a direct result of Trudeau throwing the bank vault doors open during the pandemic.
Trudeau said he would not apologize for supporting Canadian families and businesses who were in dire straits as the economy shut down to help curb the spread of COVID-19.
He said: “Let me be very clear, being there for workers, for families, for seniors, for young people, for businesses, it was the right thing to do.
“It was the smart thing to do. Having Canadians’ backs is something we will never back down from.”
Trudeau highlighted policies that have helped, which include signing child-care deals that are lowering the cost of childcare significantly for many families in every province.
Liberals MPs are coming off the first summer when they were able to get a lot of time to engage with constituents since before COVID-19 started. Most said there were three issues that people wanted to talk about: inflation, immigration and travel.
Quebec MP Alexandra Mendès said the message she received throughout the summer in her riding was that government was not good at delivering what Canadians needed.
She said: “I’m not talking about management. I’m actually talking about executing the functions of governance. And in this very particular lens is what happened this summer, a lot of it could have been predicted. And, and I’m not putting blame in any person, per se, but more instructive in the way we function as a government.”
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said there was no doubt it had been a tough two years, with many disruptions and both the private sector and government have struggled to get back on track.
He said some things haven’t performed well but the government has fused to respond so issues with airport delays and passport renewals have started to improve.
He said: “When we face challenges, we need to be honest with Canadians about why we are facing these challenges, and highlight our plan to get out of these challenge.”
He said at the start of the pandemic, Canadians did not believe the government could support people and businesses quickly and it did because there was a great focus to do it.
While talking further, he said this summer’s airport delays were caused majorly by labour shortages at both airlines and government agencies that offer security and border controls at airports but the government responded by adding more staff at the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority and the Canada Border Services Agency.
He said: “There is significant improvement.”
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