B.C. is getting attention from three federal party leaders today, including the promise of a “new deal” from the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh.
Singh has already promised to cede authority in several areas to Quebec, including on the environment, immigration and justice, as part of his vision for more asymmetric federalism, in which the provinces don’t all have the same relationship with the federal government.
Singh is also to meet with Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart, the former NDP MP whose old seat Singh now holds.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is starting his day in Delta, B.C., where he’s expected to make another announcement on the environment before flying back east to a rally in Thunder Bay, Ont.
And People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier begins a western tour, his first extended trip of the campaign, with an appearance at the Surrey, B.C., board of trade.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is campaigning in Quebec and Green Leader Elizabeth May is to reveal the financials behind her party’s platform in Halifax.
Trudeau has been trying hard to paint Scheer as backward on environmental issues, especially climate change, by tying him and his opposition to the Liberals’ carbon-pricing policy to unpopular Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
He hopes a string of environment-related promises will help draw back some of the support that got shaky after last week’s revelations of his history dressing up in black- and brownface.
Singh made climate-change promises of his own Tuesday, including pledging to electrify Canada’s public-transit fleets by the end of the next decade and to construct a coast-to-coast clean-energy corridor.
Trudeau’s climate-change policies are hypocritical, the NDP said, considering the $4.5-billion the government spent to buy the Trans Mountain oil-pipeline project.
Trudeau and Singh did speak late Tuesday about the times Trudeau darkened his skin for costumes, but neither camp would say just what they talked about.
Scheer, meanwhile, has mostly been playing his own game in central Canada, talking about undoing Liberal changes to the tax treatment small corporations get and eliminating regulations.
The Canadian Press
