Merci beaucoup. Thank you.

Merci Anaida. Je t’aime.

I begin, on behalf of everyone here, expressing my sorrow at the passing of our beloved Queen.

Two tiny words. The Queen. Yet, on every continent, those two words conjure up more than a picture. They also express an idea – the idea of decency and duty.

Elizabeth II, though she may have recoiled at the thought, was the world’s most famous woman.

Yet she *our* queen. Our sovereign for almost half of our nation’s existence.

In her 22 visits here and her dealings with 13 prime ministers, she exhibited the virtues we most cherish: Dignity, civility, humility, candour and, above all else, service.

That’s why her death, though not unexpected, is nonetheless shocking. We felt we knew her, we felt that her strengths were ours, the strengths of a country which by good fortune and God’s grace we call home.

And that perhaps is why I feel a small catch in my throat. When I utter the words that no leader has stated in this country for over seven decades. God Save the King.

Tonight begins the journey to replace an old government that costs you more and delivers you less with a new government that puts you first.

YOUR paycheck

YOUR retirement

YOUR home

YOUR country

By tackling Liberal inflation, we’ll put you back in control of your life and your money. Le travail commence ce soir, pour remplacer ce vieux gouvernement qui vous coûte plus cher et vous apporte moins avec un nouveau gouvernement qui VOUS place en premier.

VOTRE chèque de paie.

VOTRE retraite.

VOTRE maison.

VOTRE pays.

En nous attaquant à l’inflation, nous vous redonnerons le contrôle de votre argent et de votre vie.

And it IS about you.

This is not my victory, it is yours, and I have so many people to thank.

Merci à ceux et celles qui m’ont soutenu et qui se sont portés volontaires pour cette victoire. 

Merci aux autres candidats d’avoir renouvelé notre parti.

Thank you to Scott Aitchison for running on ideas like simplifying and lowering taxes, thank you very much Scott.

Thank you to Roman Baber for standing up for and making sacrifices for freedom for everybody. And thank you to his wonderful partner Nancy for championing children with autism.

Thank you to Leslyn Lewis for standing for family, faith and freedom. And to her husband John for supporting her along the way.

And thank you to Jean Charest for your service to our country – and for ensuring that we still have a country that is united in which we call ourselves home. Thank you for fighting for Canada Jean, when the nation’s back was against the wall in the 1995 referendum, you stood with courage and passion, you defended our country and our nation will ever be grateful for your work. Thank you. Absolutely.

Ça fait à peu près 40 ans que Jean est en politique, au niveau provincial et fédéral, et c’est dur. Mais souvent, les vrais héros, ce n’est pas les candidats, mais leurs familles. And that’s why I recognize Michelle. For those four decades, there have been countless occasions when her husband was fighting causes on behalf of all of us, when you had to carry the extra load and take the extra sacrifice. Countless invisible sacrifices, and we as a nation, we as a party, we thank you Michelle. Merci beaucoup.

To supporters of any of these fine candidates, I open my arms to you.

Now, today, we are one party serving one country.

Most importantly, thank you to my brilliant and beautiful wife. Merci à ma belle et brillante épouse pour avoir été mon ancre, mon pilier tout au long de cette folle aventure.

Tu as rendu cela possible.

Tu es ma meilleure amie et l’amour de ma vie. 

À la famille d’Anaida qui a pris soin de nos enfants lorsque nous étions sur la route, vous avez rendu cela possible.

Muchas Gracias a la familia de mi esposa, y por sus contribuciones a Canadá.

So that’s all the Spanish I speak. If you ever come over to our house for one of our grand family gatherings, it’s usually 20 Latinos and Latinas arguing, telling jokes, telling stories in Spanish, and one guy standing around having no idea what anyone else is saying.

My wife’s family not only raised this incredible woman, but they came to this country from Venezuela with almost nothing and they have since started businesses, raised kids, served in the military and, like so many immigrant families, built our country.

And I want to thank my brother Patrick, my father Don, his partner Ross, my mother Marlene, and even my biological mother Jackie is here today, yes.

We’re a complicated and mixed up bunch like most families, like our country.

I want to thank my parents though, in particular. I want to thank my parents —two school teachers—who adopted me from a teenage mother.

They taught me that it didn’t matter where I came from but where I was going, it didn’t matter who I knew but what I could do.

That is the hope I want my kids to inherit.

But that hope has melted into worry for many.

Today, people feel like they’ve lost control of their pocketbooks and their lives.

The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. This government, this Liberal government, has doubled our national debt, adding more debt than all previous governments combined.

That means another half-trillion dollars bidding up the cost of the goods we buy and the interest we pay. Inflationary taxes increased those costs further.

Now, they plan to triple the carbon tax on gas, heat and everything else.

Le coût du gouvernement augmente le coût de la vie. Ce gouvernement a ajouté à notre dette nationale plus que tous les autres gouvernements dans l’histoire de notre pays.

Ça veut dire 500 milliards de dollars qui s’ajoutent à l’inflation et aux augmentations des taux d’intérêt.

C’est le gouvernement le plus cher dans notre histoire.

It is the most expensive government in history.

And the more they spend, the more things cost.

The result?

Families downgrade their diets to cover the 10% year-over-year jump in food prices. Seniors delay their retirements and watch their life savings evaporate with inflation.

30-year-olds —who did everything we asked them to do —got degrees, worked hard— are trapped in 400 square foot apartments, or worse, their parents’ basements because house prices have doubled under this government.

And those who do own homes are paying more interest on their mortgages— even though this government promised interest rates would not rise for years.

Les mères monoparentales mettent de l’eau dans le lait de leurs enfants pour pouvoir se permettre la hausse de 10 % de la nourriture d’une année à l’autre.

Les personnes âgées voient leurs économies s’évaporer avec l’inflation. Des jeunes de 30 ans qui ont fait tout ce que nous avons demandé d’eux— obtenir un diplôme, travailler fort— vivent dans le sous-sol de leurs parents parce que le prix des maisons ont doublé.

Et ceux qui ont une maison paient davantage d’intérêt pour leur hypothèque.

No wonder people are worried. Most are lucky to be just getting by.

Many are falling behind.

And there are people in this country who are just…

hanging on by a thread.

These are citizens of OUR country. We are their servants. We owe them hope.

They don’t need a government that sneers at them, looks down on them, calls them names. They don’t need a government to run their lives. They need a government that can run a passport office.

They need a Prime Minister who hears them and offers them hope that they can again afford to buy a home, a car, pay their bills, afford food, have a secure retirement, and God forbid, even achieve their dreams if they work hard.

They need a Prime Minister who will restore that hope, and I will be that Prime Minister.

We will rekindle the hope that people’s paycheques and savings can buy them a decent life.

We will make government affordable so that life is affordable. We’ll cap spending and cut waste to reverse inflationary deficits and taxes.

That includes axing new taxes on your paycheque, gas, heat and other essentials.

It means fighting climate change with technology and not with taxes.

We will restore hope that hard work will again pay off.

Do you know that today, if a single mom of three kids, earning $55,000 a year goes out and earn another dollar, she loses 80 cents of it to taxes and claw backs.

So, she can’t get ahead. I will reform programs and cut taxes so that when that single mother, and people like her, earn more, they keep more and hard work always pays off in this country. 

Nous redonnerons l’espoir que le travail devienne payant de nouveau, en réformant les programmes et en réduisant les impôts, pour que les gens gardent l’argent qu’ils gagnent pour leurs familles plutôt que de tout perdre au gouvernement.  

Instead of creating more cash, let’s create more of what cash buys.

Think of it: if you’ve got 10 loaves of bread and $10, well it’s a buck a loaf. If you double the number of dollars to $20, but you still have 10 loaves of bread, well then it’s $2.

You see, spending more does not get us more. We need to make more.

So instead of doubling the money, let’s double the bread.

Let’s remove the government gatekeepers to build more homes, grow more food & produce more energy — right here in Canada.

We need to restore the hope of home ownership. Right now– youth & newcomers can’t get a home because local government gatekeepers block housing, with heavy fees and long delays for building permits, leaving us with the fewest houses per-capita of any country in the G7 even though we have the most land to build on.

A Poilievre government will require big cities that want federal infrastructure money to speed up and lower the cost of permits and to approve affordable housing around all new transit stations—so that our young people can live there don’t even need to afford a car. We will also sell off 15% of the underutilized 37,000 federal buildings to turn them into housing and use the proceeds of sale to reduce our deficit. In other words, stop printing money, start building homes for our people.

Speaking of homes—we must make stuff here at home again. Here in Canada.

Look, trade is great, trade is just great. But we learned during COVID that we can’t count on the rest of the world to take care of us. That is why we must be the best place on earth for workers and businesses to build factories, mine critical minerals for electric cars, and develop other resources.

Right now, we lose wages because we import 130,000 barrels of overseas oil, mostly from dictators – every single day- even though we have the third largest supply right here in Canada — and that is all because our government prefers dirty dictator oil and to responsible Canadian energy.

We will repeal this government’s anti-energy laws and replace them with a law that protects our environment, consults First Nations, and gets things built.

We will green light Newfoundland and Labrador’s planned increase in oil production, which will allow us to fully replace every single barrel oil we’re importing from abroad, and within five years, we will set the goal to end dictator oil in Canada altogether.

Et au lieu d’aider Poutine à vendre son gaz naturel à l’Europe pour financer sa guerre contre l’Ukraine, un gouvernement Poilievre soutiendra des projets comme GNL Québec.

Nous savons tous que les Québécois ont une source d’énergie propre: l’hydroélectricité, qu’ils peuvent utiliser pour liquéfier le gaz naturel, sans émissions. L’Europe a besoin d’acheter du gaz. Voici le choix: certains préfèrent que l’argent du gaz naturel finance les armes de guerre de Poutine.

Moi je veux que cet argent-là finance les chèques de paie pour Jean-Marc Tremblay, le soudeur du Saguenay.

We will green light mining and manufacturing of minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper to make electric car batteries. We will allow for technology to be unleashed here, instead of our money to go to foreign dictatorships.

And that also includes repatriating food production by standing with our farmers here at home.

This government’s high energy taxes and proposed fertilizer cuts will only drive food production abroad to more polluting foreign jurisdictions, which would have to then burn fuel to ship, train, and truck that food back to us. But didn’t we learn how irresponsible it was to rely on the rest of the world to provide us with our essentials during COVID?

A Poilievre government will repeal these taxes and fertilizer mandates to get out of way and off the backs of our farmers, so that we can grow affordable food, feed our people and be the breadbasket of the world. 

We will restore to First Nations more control of their land, money, and decision-making.

And those communities that want to develop resources and invite commerce to fight poverty will have an ally , rather than an obstacle, in me.

We must remove other unneeded barriers, by axing the disastrous ArriveCan App and by ending the remaining COVID vaccine mandates to let people work and travel freely.

We will bring hope to doctors, nurses and engineers, and others who are immigrants to this country but are blocked from working in their professions for no other reason than that they come from another country.

We’ll team up with provinces to guarantee that within 60 days, an immigrant applying to work in their profession will get a yes or no based on their tested abilities, not based on where they come from.

We will back up 30,000 small study loans for those in need of time off work to study up to the Canadian standard.

Enough talking, remove the gatekeepers to get more doctors, more nurses, more engineers, and more inflation-proof paycheques for our brilliant immigrants.

And we will restore the hope of safe streets, a hope that has turned into fear in all too many places, with killings in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, and most recently, Saskatchewan. Weakened laws allow chronic and violent reoffenders out of prison early at great danger to our people. Instead of spending a fortune targeting licensed and law-abiding, trained and tested firearms owners, Conservatives will bolster the laws, bolster the borders, and put the real criminals in jail.

Et nous redonnerons de l’espoir aux Québécois afin qu’ils puissent reprendre le contrôle de leurs décisions et de leurs vies au lieu d’être contrôlés par un gouvernement centralisateur et woke à Ottawa.

Vous savez, la langue française m’occupe une place toute spéciale dans mon cœur.

Mon père, qui a des origines canadiennes-françaises, et qui vient d’un village Fransaskois, m’a transmis l’importance de préserver le français dès mon plus jeune âge.

En grandissant à Calgary, malheureusement j’avais trop peu d’occasions de le parler. Donc j’ai beaucoup de travail à faire. Je continue de perfectionner cette langue que j’aime—langue fondatrice de notre pays.

Avec mon épouse, une Montréalaise, nous transmettons à notre tour à nos enfants qui vont dans les garderies francophones. Nos petits enfants, baby Cruz, et Valentina, ils auront la langue française comme première langue, et la deuxième langue, évidemment l’espagnol, et après-ça, troisième langue, l’anglais.

Je vais aller plus loin, en parlant du Québec, je dirais que les conservateurs de partout au pays ont beaucoup à apprendre des Québécois.

Les Québécois, défendent leur patrimoine, leur culture et leur langue… ils ne s’excusent pas.

La nation québécoise tient tête au wokisme.

Mon gouvernement ne va pas se mettre le nez dans tout; un état fédéral plus petit va faire grandir les citoyens du Québec et du Canada.

Small government makes for big citizens. Who own their homes, build their dreams, raise their families, look out for their neighbours, and earn powerful paycheques and savings, free from inflation and over-taxation.

We will restore Canada’s promise—in a country where it doesn’t matter who you love or if your name is Smith or Singh; Martin or Mohammad, Chang or Charles. 

A country where the dreamer, the farmer, the worker, the entrepreneur, the survivor, the fighter—the ones who get knocked down, but keep getting up and keep going—can achieve their purpose; A country where the son of a teenage mother adopted by two teachers can dare to run for Prime Minister of Canada.

In the words of the great Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker:

“I am Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country.

This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all of mankind.”

Merci beaucoup! Thank you very much!