Canada stands at a crossroads. After nearly a decade of Liberal rule under Justin Trudeau, the country has been brought to its knees by scandal, uncontrolled spending, skyrocketing costs, rising crime, and assaults on basic freedoms.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre slammed Justin Trudeau’s failed policies during his recent “Axe the Tax” tour across Canada. With fiery rhetoric and bold promises, Poilievre is positioning himself as the last great hope to rescue Canada from what he sees as Liberal mismanagement and get the country back on track after nearly a decade of Trudeau rule.

Can Poilievre channel growing populist anger and discontent into an unstoppable movement that sweeps him into power? His confrontational style and vows to slash taxes, control inflation, and champion liberty resonate with many Canadians fed up after years of Trudeau. But is Poilievre all style and no substance? Or does he truly have the vision and leadership to reverse Canada’s decline?

As the next election looms, Poilievre is waging a fierce battle to find out if he can fulfill his own billing as the Conservative savior who might just save Canada itself.

Poilievre seems to be the last hope for Canada.

During his ‘Axe the Tax’ tour of Northern Ontario, Poilievre held a press conference in Sudbury on January 13th to denounce Trudeau and the Liberal government’s policies on issues like the carbon tax, excessive spending, unaffordable housing, and lack of public safety.

The Trudeau Liberals have utterly failed on so many levels including housing affordability. Home prices have skyrocketed on their watch, rising a staggering 43% since 2015. Canada has become the second least affordable housing market in the OECD.

Housing affordability hit its worst level in more than four decades last quarter, according to the Bank of Canada, as housing prices and mortgage rates pushed higher.

But while millions struggle, Trudeau does nothing. He continues to allow foreign speculation in Canada’s housing market. And his government maintains an onerous regulatory regime that delays construction projects and drives up costs. Canadians desperately need more affordable homes, but Trudeau ignores their plight.

Trudeau and the Liberals are making life more expensive for average Canadians through poorly designed policies, excessive taxation, and runaway government spending.

A prime example is the federal carbon tax, which puts a price on carbon emissions and which the Liberals plan to steadily increase over time.

Poilievre slams the carbon tax as an unnecessary burden on consumers that drives up the cost of gasoline, home heating, groceries, and other everyday expenses. He points to the carbon tax increasing inflation and the overall cost of living, forcing many Canadians to make difficult financial choices.

Trudeau pledged to help the middle class and those working hard to join it. But his policies have done the opposite. His carbon tax increases the cost of gas, groceries, and home heating. It hits lower and middle income Canadians the hardest. Trudeau initially claimed the tax would be revenue neutral, with rebates balancing out the added costs. But the Parliamentary Budget Officer has shown that’s false. 60% of Canadian households pay more in carbon taxes than they receive in rebates.

Poilievre said Trudeau “wants to raise the carbon tax by 300 per cent to 61 cents a litre, forcing seniors to choose between eating and heating, taxing our farmers who make the food, the truckers who ship the food and therefore all who buy the food.”

The carbon tax price will rise by $15 each year starting in 2023 until it hits $170 per tonne in 2030, while the rebates Canadians get in turn will also rise, and shift from annual to quarterly payments.

But Poilievre said Trudeau was “not worth the cost of gas. He’s not worth the cost of food. He’s not worth the cost of homes. He’s not worth the cost,” adding, “Canada needs a new common sense prime minister.”

To hammer the point home, Poilievre noted that Liberal MPs from Winnipeg had voted against a Conservative motion to exempt home heating from the carbon tax, voting instead to “raise your taxes” despite brutally cold Prairie winters.

Poilievre bashes the carbon tax as a perfect example of a government that is tone-deaf and indifferent to the struggles of hard-working Canadians.

Beyond the carbon tax, Poilievre also accuses Trudeau of exacerbating inflation and the cost of living by running up massive deficits and flooding the economy with too much spending during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Poilievre pins much of the blame for 40-year high inflation rates on Trudeau’s management of federal finances, including printing over $600 billion in emergency aid. He contends that this excessive pandemic spending has overheated the economy, devalued the currency, and made everything more expensive.

Poilievre ties rising grocery bills directly to Liberal policies as well, saying that taxing carbon on the diesel fuel used by farmers and truckers inevitably gets passed on to consumers at the supermarket. He laments that while Canadians grow increasingly desperate amid skyrocketing prices, Trudeau seems oblivious and continues to push policies that drive costs up further.

The Liberals have neglected public safety and allowed chaos, crime, drugs, and violence to spiral out of control on Canadian streets. Poilievre points to homeless encampments in cities as vivid symbols of this breakdown in law and order under Trudeau’s watch. He blasts the Liberals for being soft on crime, allowing repeat and violent offenders to be released on bail or parole too easily.

Trudeau’s greatest disgrace is his assault on freedom of expression. His internet censorship Bill C-11 grants unprecedented powers to the CRTC to regulate user generated content and force social media companies to promote “Canadian” points of view. This state manipulation of online speech is authoritarian overreach that severely threatens open debate. Even Margaret Atwood has spoken out against C-11’s chilling implications.

Beyond censorship, Trudeau also seeks to control the media through a carrot and stick approach. He hands out hundreds of millions in subsidies to newspapers and broadcasters, compromising their independence. And he blocks journalists who ask tough questions from attending press conferences. This undermines a free press, which is vital to democracy.

This crackdown on press freedom was evident when Rebel News journalist David Menzies was brutally arrested for simply Questioning Trudeau’s Ministers and public officials. In reality, the query was both fair and relevant. Fast-forward to a few seconds later and an RCMP goon decided to use physical contact to shutdown this impromptu question period.

But on Friday morning, the situation was completely different in Winnipeg. Menzies was welcomed to attend a Conservative Party press conference and permitted to ask a question. He received a substantive answer from Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, a far cry from the mistreatment by Trudeau’s Liberals.

Poilievre promised that if he becomes Prime Minister, censorship and arresting journalists for ‘wrongthink’ will become a thing of the past in Canada.

During another stop in Northern Ontario, Poilievre warned voters that re-electing Liberal MPs would mean more of the same negligent policies. He said a Liberal government would continue “taxing our farmers who make the food, the truckers who ship the food, and therefore all who buy the food” through the carbon tax.

Poilievre pledged that a Conservative government would take a dramatically different approach to taxes, spending, and public safety in order to make life more affordable for Canadians.

Poilievre pointed-out Trudeau’s blatant hypocrisy on climate change. “Justin Trudeau likes to call people who heat their homes polluters, meanwhile he uses a taxpayer-funded private jet to go around the world on fancy $9,000 a day vacations gifted to him by millionaire and billionaire friends”

Poilievre warns that Trudeau cannot be trusted and pursues an ideological agenda that disregards the interests of average Canadians struggling to get by. He argues the country desperately needs the “common sense” approach that Conservatives would bring to get Canada back on track.

After nearly nine years of Trudeau, Canada is nearly unrecognizable. Constant scandals, runaway spending, higher costs of living, rising crime, government overreach, and attacks on liberties have severely damaged Canada.