We are now just three days away from election day in Canada. Canadians will head to the polls on April 28th.
In Provencher, the five candidates whose names will appear on the ballot are:
- Ted Falk (Conservative Party of Canada)
- Noel Gautron (People's Party of Canada)
- Trevor Kirczenow (Liberal Party of Canada)
- Blair Mahaffy (Green Party of Canada)
- Brandy Schmidt (New Democratic Party)
SteinbachOnline hosted a 2025 Provencher Candidates Forum, involving three participants: Noel Gautron, Trevor Kirczenow and Blair Mahaffy. All five candidates were invited to attend, however, according to Ted Falk's campaign office, his campaign calendar is very full, and he was unable to attend. Falk did however submit his answers to the questions that were asked. And, though we invited Brandy Schmidt through the NDP office, we did not receive a reply.
One of the questions we asked was what should be done to tackle the rising cost of living in Canada and southeastern Manitoba (the entire forum can be viewed in the video at the bottom of this article):
Blair Mahaffy
I'm very concerned about the wealth accumulation in Canada right now. It's wealth inequity at its highest rate ever in the country, which means the poor are getting poorer while the wealthy are getting considerably wealthier. So, when we are dealing with things like the Trump tariffs, and we are talking about how to respond, when I hear things like massive tax cuts I worry that that means that we're going to put tariffs on, which costs poor people more and that we're giving tax cuts to the wealthy so that they can accumulate more wealth. While it's important to have investment in the economy, it's also important that the poorest among us aren't struggling. One of the Green Party platform points is to increase the personal income tax exemption from $17,000 up to $40,000 to help free up income for lower income Canadians and to close loopholes on tax savings for wealthy and to tax large highly profitable corporations more. We also have to look at issues of sustainability. Some of our food cost prices are driven by climate change, that's going to change. It's going to get worse. And we need to look at how can we make our food supplies more resilient and able to withstand the pressures that climate change is going to bring, because that problem's going to get worse.
Noel Gautron
Our platform lays out elimination of taxes. So, one that I'd like to focus on today would specifically be taxes and levies with regard to energy and those biproducts. So of course, previous to the government eliminating the carbon tax, we were both in favour of eliminating the consumer side and the commercial side. Because one thing that a lot of individuals forget is the amount that the commercial side will end up affecting their bottom-line cost. This is costs that are transmitted through the business to the end user after all. In addition to that, we would like to see a moratorium on immigration until such a time as the housing prices and their of late rapid ascent in value stabilizes to something that approximate a normal appreciation rate. This in turn I think will add a lot of affordability to the overall market.
Trevor Kirczenow
I think the biggest threat that we are facing right now in terms of our cost of living continuing to go up has to do with Donald Trump and Canada's relations with the United States. Even just the threat of tariffs and the instability that that causes, tariffs being on again, off again, that is brutally difficult for businesses and it's not good for our economy. Fortunately, the Liberal party has a leader in Mark Carney who is a very experienced economist. And I think he is the right person to tackle these issues and lead us through this crisis at this time. We have solid plans to help with the cost of living. The federal government could act as a housing developer to help quickly build housing at scale that is affordable. We plan to invest $25 billion in financing for prefabricated homebuilders and also $5 billion into a trade corridor, which will help create more jobs and drive economic growth. As well, I think we need to keep and protect the programs that we've recently established that really take care of people. Good examples include the new federal dental care as well as federal Pharmacare, which in Manitoba just took effect (April 15), and also the $10 per day daycare program is incredibly important for helping families right now with the cost of living. The Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre voted against all of those programs. I would like to point out that tax cuts are nice when you are making a lot of money, but we also need programs to help people who have lost their jobs.
Ted Falk (via email)
To address the cost-of-living crisis we first need to look at the root causes. How did we get here? And there's a very simple answer to that. Three words: taxation, inflation, and corruption. Taxes. This Liberal government has raised taxes on Canadians significantly over the past nine years. They may have temporarily taken off the carbon tax - don't be fooled it's coming back if they win, just without the rebate. Mr. Carney has long advocated a higher carbon tax and called the Trudeau tax the gold standard for the world. The carbon tax has significantly affected costs while doing nothing to demonstrably help the environment. By the way, even if it had we wouldn't know because they weren't tracking results. And that makes sense because this was never about the environment. The Liberal carbon tax was always about one thing, wealth redistribution. That's what all their taxation is about. Less money for Canadian families and more money for government and their wealthy friends. They got rid of income splitting. They tried to raise taxes on small businesses (called them tax cheats - Mark Carney would know), tried to hike capital gains taxes. The list goes on. They also caused mass inflation by borrowing and printing money to pay for their out-of-control reckless spending. Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney doubled our national debt; it now sits at around $1.2 trillion. For what? Is your life better? Are government services better, faster, more easily accessible? Are you better off financially? Is our country, is your neighbourhood safer? The answer I'm hearing and seeing to all of these questions and many more is, no. And corruption. You know I don't think we've ever had a more conflicted Prime Minster than Mark Carney and these Liberals have taken corruption to a whole new level. Billions of dollars unaccounted for. Hundreds of millions finding their way into the pockets of Liberal insiders. We Charity, Arrive Scam the list just goes on and on. Thankfully, there are fairly simple common-sense solutions to these three problems driving the cost-of-living crisis. Conservatives will axe Liberal taxes across the board and leave more money in the pockets of Canadians. We will end Liberal cronyism and crime and return ethics and accountability to government spending. And we will use our commonsense kitchen table dollar-for-dollar approach to spending. For every dollar of new government spending a dollar of savings must be found. That's how families have to live, within their means, government should have to do the same. The way to address the cost-of-living crisis is to leave more money in the pockets of Canadians.
We also asked the candidates for their position on trade, and how Canada should move forward in the face of U.S. tariffs.
Trevor Kirczenow
The U.S. is no longer a trustworthy or reliable trading partner. We definitely should not have all our eggs in that one basket at this point. I think it's very clear we need to diversify our trading relationships. And I believe that Liberal leader Mark Carney is a great person to be leading that. He already has connections to the European Union and good standing in the international community and that's something that he already is helping us to be able to do. Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives unfortunately they want to cut foreign aid, which I think is a bad idea at this time, when we need to improve our standing in the international community, diversify our trade relationships, work with other countries more, that is not the time to cut foreign aid. As well, I believe that we need to remove interprovincial trade barriers as much as we can. Some examples of those include job certifications for example in nursing, being different from one province to another, I think that's the kind of thing that we could look at just try to make that easier for people to work in different provinces. Trucking is another good example with having different load safety regulations in different provinces, as well as infrastructure that affects that. So, I think we need to tackle those things and ensure that we have robust interprovincial trade and diversify our international trade so that we are not so dependent on the United States.
Blair Mahaffy
Clearly even if in the next four or five years the U.S. Administration changes, we can't rely on them to be a consistent and steady partner, because they have to sort out this highly partisan system. We do absolutely need to diversify our trade. And that means closer ties to Europe, which I don't think it hurts us because their environmental controls and their social policies are pretty strong. South America, Central America, Africa, all sorts of opportunities exist for us to develop more trade. I am concerned about the narrative that's come out of, particularly the CPC about let's build more pipelines. We are in a world where it's very possible that peak oil is going to be hit in the next decade, that that market is going to slow down and it seems to us that investing billions in building infrastructure for an end-of-life industry, or approaching end of life, is not a good investment. We have an opportunity to build renewables, solar energy, wind energy, which also helps us build independence so that if a community such as Lorette put in a solar power infrastructure to power the town, they could sell that back to the grid and that allows them some energy independence that could be in their control and out of corporate control. And the reality is, China in the last two years has brought on more renewable energy than the rest of the world combined and Europe is well ahead in that market. We need to not be the provider of raw materials. We should be developing this technology before we get left behind.
Noel Gautron
I suppose as a contrarian opinion our position is that we need to cut a deal with the Americans. To give you some rough numbers, on any given year the United States accounts for about 60-70 per cent of our GDP. To put that into context, there is no clear replacement either in the short term or in the long term that could be a replacement for the United States. Reality is this, they are experiencing a bit of a protectionist trend. Historically the United States, it's about every 60-70 years, about 20 years they are a little bit more centralized in their focus. With that in mind, we need to cut a deal with them. It's the one advanced market that is still going to be there, like 30 to 40 years as previously stipulated. The demographic situation in Europe, even if we are looking at what we'd perceive as larger potential economies, take China, their demographic situation is worse than that of Italy, which already has a mean age that's approaching 50. So, we're not going to find additional consumers for our products there. So, I can't express enough how important that American trade relations is. Along that note of ameliorating that relation and its current spat. The current administration I think everyone can observe, does not respond well to being poked in the eye. So, if we are actually looking to have that relationship going forward, I would argue it's best to leave that battle and in four years we won't have something that we're a little bit more accustomed to in terms of that relationship. Still, I will reiterate, they are going into a protectionist era.
Ted Falk (via email)
This is another of those "how did we get here" questions. Of course, these tariffs are ridiculous. They are bad for Canada. Bad for the US. Bad for everybody. But again, we need to look at why we are in this position. Why are we so vulnerable to these tariffs. From his first days in office, Justin Trudeau, advised by Mark Carney, waged war on the main driver of Canada's economy, our energy sector. Since 2015, their Liberal Government has blocked or cancelled 16 different energy projects, costing Canada's economy more than $176 billion. When other countries (Germany, Japan, Greece, etc.) begged Ottawa to export our top-quality liquid natural gas, the Trudeau Government refused. Trudeau claimed there was "no business case for doing so." This is stupefying as Japan is the world's 5th largest consumer of LNG and Germany is number 8. Both currently buy LNG from Russia. They'd rather do business with Canada, but Trudeau and Carney said, "no thanks." Meanwhile, the Americans built 15 LNG plants to meet world demand. Mark Carney has strongly supported Trudeau's anti-pipeline agenda - at least in Canada. Mr. Carney's hypocrisy is incredible as at the same time he opposed resource development in Canada his company was investing billions in pipelines in Brazil and the Middle East. This ideological choice to shut down and land-lock Canada's energy sector is the primary reason we are vulnerable to Donald Trump. The United States is the world's largest consumer of oil and gas. Overall, Canada sends about 81 per cent of its crude oil exports to the United States, 99% of our natural gas. Anyone in business will tell you if you only have one main customer your business is vulnerable. Now, with these tariffs, the Americans have us over a barrel; and Canadians should know exactly who to thank. So, number one, we need to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers so we can have free trade between the provinces. Two, we need to get pipelines approved built fast - across Canada energy corridor (oil, gas, hydro) -- so we can get our resources to markets around the globe. Three, we need to diversify our trading relationships, develop new markets, even if it's just temporarily. That's how we can mitigate the impact of these or future tariffs. That's exactly what commonsense Canada first Conservatives will do.