OTTAWA — As Canadians brace for another round of punishing tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre spent the last few days campaigning on ideas to try to lessen the country’s economic dependence on America.

“We can’t rely on the Americans to determine our economic destiny,” he said at a press conference in Saint John, N.B., Monday. The Conservative policies  suggest a game of one-upmanship after the Liberals announced a suite of measures in response to the trade war just before the election campaign began.

Axing the capital gains tax: Liberal Leader Mark Carney beat Poilievre to the punch days before triggering the election when he put a definitive end to the Liberal government’s plans to hike the capital gains tax. Carney said the move would spur investment and “incentivize builders, innovators and entrepreneurs to grow their businesses in Canada.” 

Poilievre said he plans to go a step further, and defer capital gains taxes on any income that is reinvested in Canada. Right now there’s no added incentive to invest domestically, he said at a campaign stop in North York, Ont., Sunday. This will be like economic rocket fuel,” he said Sunday, adding that those reinvestments will help fund the infrastructure needed for “going around the Americans” and shipping goods abroad. The tax wouldn’t be paid until the investor cashed out, or reinvested the money overseas, he said. 

Some of the harshest critics of the Liberals’ initial plans to increase the inclusion rate on capital gains taxes applauded Poilievre’s tax-deferral scheme. “We have long advocated for policies that enhance access to capital for high-potential Canadian firms,” said Benjamin Bergen, Council of Canadian Innovators president. He said Poilievre’s latest tax pitch aligns with that goal. 

A national energy corridor: Poilievre also pitched an energy corridor through Canada where pipelines, transmission lines and other critical infrastructure would have a “pre-approved right of way.” The idea is to speed up approvals for major projects and lend some regulatory certainty to potential private-sector proponents, without having to route energy or goods through the U.S.

Carney had already begun work on a similar plan right before the election began. As prime minister, he held a meeting of provincial and territorial premiers who agreed to work together on a national strategy for a trade and energy corridor. They plan to do that by untangling free-trade barriers between provinces, streamlining the project approval process and helping to pay for links between project sites and existing transportation networks, Carney said. 

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he would want to make sure that there’s community buy-in before moving ahead on any energy project, but he would favour an east-west electricity grid.

Don’t call it a pivot: The emphasis on policies designed to disentangle Canada’s economy from the U.S. comes after several reports about discontent in the Tory ranks about the campaign’s focus on the Liberal government’s record, rather than on Trump’s trade threats. Poilievre said Monday he hasn’t changed a thing in response to those reports. “All the things that we need to do to respond to the economic aggression of the Americans are things I’ve been talking about for 10 years,” he said. 

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he would want to make sure that there’s community buy-in before moving ahead on any energy project, but he would favour an east-west electricity grid.

Here’s what else you need to know: 

• The Liberals released a housing plan, pledging to create a new federal housing construction agency called Build Canada Homes; put $25 billion into financing prefabricated and modular housing; and use federal funding to help municipal governments cut development charges in half for multi-unit buildings. The goal is to double construction rates to “almost 500,000 new homes a year.”
• The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh promised to redirect subsidies and tax breaks for fossil-fuel companies (worth $18 billion over 10 years, he said) to home energy retrofits, with a bias toward Canadian-made products in those renovations. He also promised a border carbon adjustment—essentially a carbon tax on imports from countries with less stringent emissions policies, which the government has considered but not implemented.
• Poilievre pledged to let travelling trades workers write off the full cost of food, transportation and accommodations on their taxes.
• Carney is under pressure to drop Markham-Unionville candidate Paul Chiang for comments he made about turning a Conservative candidate over to China for a bounty. Chiang recently apologized, and Carney has said he will keep him on the ballot.