TORONTO — Much like the parliamentarians who will vote on the Liberal government’s budget later this month, Toronto’s business community faced a tough choice on Friday: lunch with Mark Carney or Pierre Poilievre?

The prime minister and opposition leader were in Canada’s commercial capital delivering duelling speeches on the state of the economy, and the country. Conveniently, or perhaps not, Carney started speaking at 12:46 p.m., Poilievre at 12:50. Two luncheons, two visions for Canada, and two venues just one city block apart.

Poilievre was greeted by a standing ovation when he entered the stage at the Hilton Toronto, applause abruptly replacing clinking forks on dessert plates and the din of chattering voices. At the sold-out luncheon, hosted by the Economic Club of Canada and attended by 500 Bay Street executives, lobbyists and policy insiders, Poilievre was among friends. 

Three days after Carney’s first federal budget, the opposition leader took the opportunity to hammer home what he thinks of his rival—the “tight-fisted banker,” he mocked—who, by Poilievre’s assessment, botched his debut attempt at a fiscally responsible blueprint for Canada. 

He accused Carney of doubling the deficit, breaking his promise to spend less, and loading households with higher costs. “Every dollar the government spends comes out of the pockets of Canadians,” Poilievre told the room, to nods and applause. For nearly an hour, he framed the budget as proof of Liberal excess and offered his own counter-vision: a government that spends only what it saves, builds homes instead of bureaucracies, and lets the people who “actually build” get back to work.

The crowd of familiar conservative faces—among them, strategist Kory Teneycke, commentator Ginny Roth and former Ontario finance and long-term care minister Rod Phillips—were roused to their feet periodically, with a call for “big, open, free-enterprise economy that rewards hard work” sparking an especially enthusiastic reaction. 

A few hundred metres away on Bay Street, the main hall at Arcadian Court was packed for Carney, with some 400 attendees crammed around tables that sold out within minutes of the event being announced.

Canadian Club Toronto, which hosted the event, could have filled the venue twice over, so long was the waitlist. Interest in attending crashed the club’s site for most of Wednesday. Poilievre’s luncheon, which had space for more attendees, took a few days to sell out.

At the Canadian Club, executives from Bay Street and beyond were in attendance: RBC, Scotiabank and TD Bank; Agnico Eagle Eagle Mines and Hudbay. Former CPP Investments CEO Mark Wiseman was there, as was Martin Basiri, CEO of immigration technology startup Passage. Rogers Communications chief corporate affairs officer Navdeep Bains caught up with sometime Bell CEO Michael Sabia, who is now Carney’s Clerk of the Privy Council. 

Carney, often a serious speaker, started out a little loose. He cracked wise about the length of Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s budget speech and predecessor Brian Mulroney’s relatively more successful efforts to seal a U.S. trade deal. 

But then he reverted to the slower, more sombre tone of a prime minister selling a new budget and an economic vision at a time of geopolitical tension. “This is not a transition, it’s a disruption, and it means that our economic strategy needs to change dramatically,” he said. 

Carney also picked up a familiar theme for him, and for the Liberal government that preceded his own. “Our core problem is that business investment has been flat over the last decade—somehow, we have stopped taking risks,” he said, citing corporate Canada’s lack of spending as the cause of the country’s sluggish productivity growth. 

He touted the budget’s accelerated tax write-off for capital spending as a solution. “The vast majority of investments catalyzed by this budget [will be] decided in rooms like this and by the organizations that you represent,” he said, adding “someone has to decide to build the data centre and the infrastructure.”

That’s a little softer than Carney was a decade or so ago when, as governor of the Bank of Canada, he told companies to stop sitting on piles of “dead money” and instead put it to work. His comments back then provoked uproar on Bay Street; on Friday, the room gave him a reflexive standing ovation. 

Later, Carney headed a few blocks northwest to visit the Vector Institute. In front of an audience of AI researchers, startup founders and ecosystem figures, he returned to the theme of building big things. “We need sovereign compute, and we are backstopping that at scale,” he said, promising “a lot more” to come beyond the $925.6 million over five years in the budget.  

Carney also touted budget promises to attract researchers, and the government’s plan to use more AI in its own operations. “We have to make decisions with scarce money,” he said. “We’re betting on AI.”

Back at the Hilton, Poilievre’s supporters lingered over coffee and conversation, buoyed by what felt like a campaign rally. 

Not a day before Carney and Poilievre hosted their rival luncheons, the Conservative leader lost a vote in Parliament to amend the budget, a preliminary test of whether the government has the support to see its spending plan through. 

His party still plans to oppose the budget outright in the Nov. 17 confidence vote, despite the favourable odds of it passing and—to the dismay of some cheering for Poilievre—avoiding an election. “I’d love to go to an election right now,” said Victor Kutcher, a dentist at the Poilievre luncheon who said he’s concerned about affordability. His colleague, Cyril Tahtadjian, agreed: “Bring it on,” he said.