Singh says he'll fight for national rent control as campaign enters home stretch

Canadians went to set ahead polls in register book of numbers. What does that intend?

Poilievre proposes more power for police, judges to address tent encampments

Fact-checking the numbers in the parties' platforms

Singh says B.C. Voters have the power to deny Carney a supermajority

Carney calls Poilievre’s Conservative costed platform numbers ‘a joke’

Singh took aim at Poilievre, who unveiled today his plan for clearing homeless encampments that have sprung up across the country amid a mental health and housing crisis.

Poilievre says a Conservative government would amend the Criminal Code to give police the power to arrest people for discouraging the general public from using or moving through public spaces.

Singh said he agrees that people shouldn’t have to live in tents, but said Poilievre’s approach amounts to criminalizing homelessness.

“He wants to charge people that are homeless. He wants to criminalize people that have nowhere else to live. It tracks for the Conservatives,” said Singh. €œThese are fellow humans. We have to treat people with compassion and dignity.”

With speculation swirling about Singh’s future, the party leader was asked by a reporter if he can commit to running in a fourth federal race. He didn’t.

“I can commit to this: in a time when people tell me that they are desperately worried about what’s going to happen in their life, they’re worried that they’re not going to be able to stay in their homes — we’re going to be here to talk about rent control,” he said.

Singh promises national rent control if elected

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, speaking in Halifax on Sunday, announced that he would tie federal funding for building homes to provincial regulations that would protect renters.

At his campaign stop in Edmonton today, Singh promoted his plan to bring in a national rent control program.

It’s an announcement that he had previously rolled out, as he tries to convince Canadians to send New Democrats to the House of Commons and stop a Liberal majority.

“We can’t let Mark Carney have all the power, because when Liberals have all the power, they ignore people,” said Singh, whose party is a distant third in the polls.

He was speaking in front of the Annamoe Mansion apartment complex, where tenants say the new owner is tripling everyone’s rent as of July 1.

“This should be illegal,” said Singh.

The NDP has said tenant-protection policies, which do not usually fall under federal jurisdiction, could include rent increase guidelines, bans on increases above guidelines and vacancy regulation.

Singh has proposed making rent-control policies a condition of federal housing money for provinces and municipalities.

Singh will be speaking soon in Edmonton. Later, he’ll participate in the Assembly of First Nations election forum.

AFN, an advocacy organization for chiefs countrywide, is holding virtual forums with party leaders. Green Party Co-Leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault appeared in a session April 14 and Poilievre participated yesterday.

"Monsieur Blanchet, bonjour," Martin Cozic, a lone diner sitting down for brunch at Petinos on Montreal's South Shore, called out this morning while Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet was engaged in shaking hands during a photo op.

Cozic was sitting upright, clearly prepared for the moment.

"You look like you're getting ready to ask me a question," Blanchet said with a smile.

Cozic’s question: how can Blanchet pretend to be useful to Quebecers while relegating himself and his MPs to permanent opposition status?

It’s an accusation familiar to Blanchet. He immediately launched into his well-rehearsed defence, pointing out the logical conclusion of such a thesis would be that all opposition parties are useless.

Cozic said it was a good answer, shook Blanchet’s hand and let the leader move on.

Cozic later admitted to journalists that he has voted Liberal as long as he can remember, but is thinking of voting for the NDP this time.

This is a rare kind of switch in Quebec. According to opinion polls, people changing their votes are mostly switching from Bloc-blue to Liberal-red.

At news conferences and on social media this week, Poilievre has said repeatedly that the Liberal Party’s platform was drafted for former prime minister Justin Trudeau and then the party simply switched Trudeau’s name for Mark Carney’s.

Poilievre seized on that, saying the only change Carney made was to increase inflationary spending.

However, Mohammad Hussain, spokesman for the Liberal Party campaign, denied Carney’s name was simply swapped in for Trudeau’s.

“This is categorically false,” he said. €œWhile the Liberal Party of Canada consulted Canadians on what they wanted to see from their political party, the vision laid out and the policies chosen in the platform are entirely of Mark Carney's. Much of the policy development also began from when he kicked off his leadership campaign, and was based on the economic pillars he laid out upon launching his campaign.”

Hussain said the Liberal Party has an extensive grassroots network of members, advocates and experts contributing to its policy process, and it’s normal for parties to do outreach and consultations on policy before an election campaign.

“A series of post-debate polls suggest that the margin between the Liberals and Conservatives has narrowed nationally, but the Liberals still hold the lead,” he wrote.

“The Conservatives are not closing the gap in the important battlegrounds of Ontario and British Columbia, leaving the Liberals as the heavy favourites to win the most seats — and likely a majority government.”

We’re in the air right now flying to Vancouver Island.

Carney is travelling to Victoria for the second time this campaign. The Liberals are targeting NDP candidate Laurel Collins’s riding, which has been an NDP stronghold for almost two decades.

The last time the Liberals won in Victoria was back in 2004. But with polls suggesting the NDP's support could be collapsing in the province, the campaign is sending Carney to areas where they think his appearance could make a difference and help them win.

Carney is also expected to stop in New Westminster for the second time this race — in NDP candidate Peter Julian’s riding.

B.C. Is a key battleground to watch in this election, with a series of potential three-way races between the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP.

Singh spent the long weekend campaigning in the province to try and hold onto half of his party’s seats. Poilievre also campaigned in B.C. Over the weekend and is expected to return to Nanaimo before election day.

I’m Ashley Burke, a senior reporter covering the Liberal campaign.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is flying to British Columbia this morning after spending Tuesday campaigning in Quebec.

At a campaign stop yesterday at Chez Ben canteen in Granby, Que., Carney put on a hat as he headed into the kitchen, according to La Presse Canadienne reporter Michel Saba.

Carney joked that it was like Donald Trump’s photo-op where he staged working the drive-thru at a McDonald’s, Saba said.

"I said I'm a little bit like Trump, a little bit like Trump at McDonald's," Carney said to a member of his team from the other side of the drive-thru window.

What’s called the “pool” media were at this whistle stop with Carney. The pool is a small group of videographers, photographers and a reporter who document campaign stops, often when the space is too tight for everyone to fit in. The campaign says at its peak this week there will be 24 journalists travelling with Carney.

The photo of the day went to Carlos Osorio, who captured Carney posing in front of the canteen’s sign for Reuters.

Carney held one of his bigger rallies later that night in Laval, where for the second night in a row he said the core of his plan is to “build, baby, build” — a play on Trump’s line, “drill, baby, drill.”

A day after Poilievre released his costed platform, one reporter asked the Conservative leader why his platform “doesn’t account” for the possibility that Canada could be headed into a recession, noting that his plan projects growth based on policies that haven’t yet come to fruition — such as repealing Bill C-69.

He didn’t directly answer the question. He said that Canada’s current economic circumstances are the result of Liberal government policies.

“You ask me, in a period of economic weakness, after the Liberals have been in power for three terms, whether it is wise to campaign on economic growth? It’s not only wise — it’s essential for a change that we grow our economy,” he said.

Some Canadian economists have warned that the country is likely to fall into a recession as a result of an ongoing trade war with the U.S.

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