Federal Conservative leader visits Windsor

The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada stepped into the Windsor region. 

On Wednesday, Pierre Poilievre was in Windsor to visit a couple of local businesses who do machining and advance metal works, as well as a trip to the UHC - Hub of Opportunities where he was able to see the operations at the centre. 

Speaking on AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides, Poilievre says it was great to see what the Hub of Opportunities offers, including assisting job seekers, as well as specialized programming for newcomers to help them settle into local communities. He adds he was able to see the Hub's small food bank, as well as other services offered. 

He says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not 'worth the cost' in terms of rising interest rates, the cost of living, housing costs, and that immigrants who come to Canada are actually leaving as they can't afford the Liberal taxes and housing prices. 

Poilievre says Trudeau divides to distract. 

"Immigrants come to Canada with this beautiful idea that's based on the pre-Trudeau era, when things were actually quite good, and they get here and they say 'what the heck happened to Canada?'. And now we're seeing a record number of immigrants actually turning around and leaving because they can't afford Trudeau's taxes and housing costs that he's caused."

He says if he is elected Prime Minister he will implement a formula that links the number of immigrants to the number of houses built in the preceding year. 

"That means that we'll have the houses before we get the people. Right now, we're doing it the other way around where we brought in one million people last year, and we only built 200,000 homes. Well we needed to build more than double that, just to accommodate the population growth, not even to make housing more affordable."

Poilievre says cities need to stop rejecting and blocking home development. 

"My common sense plan is to require cities permit 15 per cent more home completions per year, or they will lose federal money. It's going to be a basic formula, if they beat my target, by say 10 per cent, they'll get 10 per cent more money. If they miss it by 10 per cent, they'll get 10 per cent less."

He adds that federally funded transit stations need to be surrounded by high-density apartments. 

He says if elected he will also sell off 6,000 federal buildings, and thousands of acres of federal land to build more houses. 

-with files from AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides