Canadian Trudeau clashed with rising inflation as the election race narrows

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 15 (Reuters) – The leader of Canada’s main opposition party said on Wednesday that a rise in inflation last month highlighted the failure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s economic policies and urge Canadians to vote for the government in Monday’s election.

Erin O’Toole, whose Conservatives are linked to the polls with Trudeau’s center-left Liberals, said Canadians were experiencing an affordable crisis and blamed what she called the Prime Minister’s reckless spending and massive debts. .

“It’s worrying that Justin Trudeau doesn’t seem to care about the cost of living being imposed on Canadians because of inflation,” O’Toole said in a statement.

Statistics Canada said the annual inflation rate in August accelerated to 4.1%, the highest level since March 2003, in part due to the high cost of gasoline and the fact that prices in August 2020 were depressed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Liberals, in power for the past six years, have accumulated record debt and the highest budget deficits since World War II. Trudeau promises more investment if he wins.

The Liberal leader said he acknowledged that families were concerned about affordability and that is why his government had spent a lot on protecting businesses and people from the worst of the pandemic.

He told reporters in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that Canada is “recovering … from an extreme crisis of this pandemic that has caused many disruptions and yes, it is raising prices.”

The Bank of Canada says the rise in prices is temporary and expects inflation to fall back to the central bank’s 2% target by 2022.

O’Toole, in statements to reporters in Saguenay, Quebec, said a Conservative government would tackle high inflation by slowing spending and allowing greater competition in wireless markets and the Internet.

The Conservative leader promises to balance the budget in a decade without making cuts, but has not explained how to do so.

Left-wing New Democrats, who compete with the Liberals for progressive voter support in the Sept. 20 federal election, said inflation data showed that “people can no longer afford Justin’s empty promises. Trudeau ”.

Trudeau, who leads a minority government that relies on the support of opposition parties to pass legislation, called elections last month, two years earlier, to ask for voter support for his recovery plan. Liberals, however, have seen their first advances in polls fade rapidly amid fatigue and voter dissatisfaction with the early election call.

A telephone survey conducted by Nanos Research on 1,200 Canadians by CTV on Wednesday put public support for the Conservatives at 31.2%, the Liberals at 30.5% and the New Democrats at 21.4%. This result could lead to a stalemate in which no party is capable of forming even a stable minority government.

The survey is considered accurate to 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Written by David Ljunggren Edited by Paul Simao

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