While Poilievre promises a fully costed platform Peel voters are left in the dark

The last five years have felt like a decade. Canadians have endured a global pandemic, unavailable housing and an escalating affordability crisis, only to be confronted by a looming trade war and threats to our sovereignty at the start of this year. 

Canadians need leadership with a clear path forward.

Nearly 2 million voters cast their ballots on the first day of advance polls, April 18—a record turnout, according to Elections Canada. 

Their decisions were made without a fully costed platform from each of the three major parties, leaving Canadians, and voters across Peel, in the dark.

“It's a tough decision for people to make when you are making a decision that has such a long-term impact without understanding where each party is going to stand,” co-founder of the Ontario-based group Green Ummah, Aadil Nathani, who also voted with his family on Friday, told The Pointer.

“We have an understanding of where some parties may stand on some specific environmental issues, but without knowing where their budgets are going to end up, it is extremely difficult to make such a quick and rash decision without that information.”

In Mississauga and Brampton, clarity about what each would-be prime minister will prioritize is not a luxury—it’s the difference between protecting homes from flooding, finding a hospital bed for a loved one and having a roof over one’s family.

From Brampton’s child care desert to Mississauga’s underfunded transit system, this election will have a unique impact on residents in Canada’s seventh and eighth largest cities.  

(Elections Canada)

Detailed party platforms and how much they would cost taxpayers were somethings voters in past elections had come to expect.

Canadians have had few of those critical details to work with this election.

On April 19, Mark Carney and the Liberal Party unveiled an election platform pledging nearly $130 billion in new investments over the next four years, with funding for 11 initiatives aimed at directly or indirectly addressing Canada’s climate crisis.

Figures in millions (000,000s)

The Liberals’ fully costed platform outlines $4.35 billion in spending over the next four years on environment and climate-change related initiatives.

(Chart: Anushka Yadav/Data: Liberal Party of Canada)

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who has yet to release his party’s costed platform, criticized the Liberal spending, warning it would drive up the cost of living and "risk the very stability of our economy." On April 21, Poilievre announced at a GTA news conference that his platform would be revealed on April 22: “Tomorrow, we’ll have a platform for all eyes to see which will bring change to Canada.”

Poilievre has been teasing the release of his party’s platform since March, repeatedly saying it was coming “soon” — but failing to follow through. Over the past month, he has offered vague assurances that a detailed platform with all the costs would be released, without doing so.

Voters in Peel still do not know how he would battle floods, protect drinking water, preserve Lake Ontario, plant trees or fight rising heat, issues that directly impact the region’s 1.7 million residents.

Mississauga has invested more than $200 million in stormwater infrastructure since 2016 to tackle flooding. Municipalities are expected to face $700 million in added annual costs just to maintain stormwater and wastewater systems, with total climate-driven infrastructure costs soaring to $6.2 billion by 2030.

There’s a need for proactive adaptation—through increased capacity and green infrastructure—which could prevent even greater long-term expenses and reduce the risk of flood damage. Yet little action has followed. Provincial support has shrunk, with Ontario slashing flood management funding to conservation authorities by 50 percent in 2019.

It’s not just flood prevention and infrastructure that needs funding—Peel’s most essential resource, its water, is under growing threat as well.

Lake Ontario provides drinking water to approximately 6.3 million Ontarians.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

Peel’s 1.7 million residents rely on Lake Ontario for drinking water, but PFAS (“forever chemicals”) and other contaminants are showing up in local water systems, yet remain unregulated in Ontario. 

Map illustrating Great Lakes areas of concern.

(Ontario.ca)

The federal government’s long-promised Freshwater Action Plan—originally a $1 billion pledge to protect large water systems like the Great Lakes—has fallen dramatically short, with just $19.6 million delivered in Budget 2022 and another $76 million announced in 2024. Even then, much of that funding has failed to reach the organizations responsible for on-the-ground preservation and monitoring, leaving dangerous gaps in protection.

With rising temperatures and rapid development, the region is also in urgent need of a stronger tree canopy—to reduce heat, manage stormwater and improve air quality. But the federal government’s pledge to plant two billion trees has fallen behind schedule, and Peel, like many other regions, is still waiting.

While funding for environmental initiatives and climate change plans is perhaps the most glaring example of the lack of information for voters, especially those considering the Conservative Party but waiting for some kind of sign that it is taking climate change seriously, other critical issues also lack proper accounting. 

Peel has one of the longest wait lists for subsidized housing in the country. Three years ago, there were more than 28,000 households waiting for centralized housing assistance, and the Region has since reported that without a massive funding increase from Ottawa, which downloaded subsidized housing in the ‘90s without ever providing municipalities with funding tools to pay for it, the number of residents waiting for support will continue to explode. 

Four years ago, Peel Region reported a $442 million funding gap over ten years just to keep its existing public housing stock in good condition. Housing staff have said Ottawa needs to contribute hundreds of millions on top of this every year to create new stock to support the tens of thousands of households on the centralized waitlist for a subsidy.

The housing plan put forward by Carney and the Liberals has many questions around it: He has proposed $11.8 billion over four years for Build Canada Homes, the affordable housing agency the Liberals plan to create. Another $6 billion would go to municipalities for housing-related infrastructure and $4.1 billion would be set aside for tax incentives to builders to create rental units. But it remains unclear how Peel, for example, would specifically benefit from Carney’s federal housing corporation plan, and how much money would be set aside specifically for public housing to be built under the authority of this new public corporation.

Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, meanwhile, have provided no plan for public housing and no costing for how they would address the widening gap municipalities face.

Another issue lacking clarity this election is funding for social services and programs that address the disturbing rise in gender-based violence in communities across the country including human trafficking. While pushing tough on crime messaging and stricter sentencing, which do not address the root causes of the increasing violence, the Conservatives have not said how they would invest in the fight against what the federal government has labelled an epidemic.

Carney has pledged to hire a thousand more RCMP officers to fight human trafficking and the flow of illegal drugs into communities.

Canada’s National Action Plan to address gender-based violence, launched in 2022, promised $539 million over its first five years. But advocacy groups across the country have said it is not nearly enough to adequately combat the problem. It is only a fraction of the estimated $9 billion that sexual assault and intimate partner violence costs the Canadian economy annually. 

While the Liberals have pledged $6 billion annually for municipal infrastructure to support the construction of new homes, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates that $600 billion will be needed to cover all the required infrastructure for 5.8 million new homes, which is the estimated need to meet demand.

Poilievre has not yet provided any funding details of what a Conservative government would provide to municipalities for new infrastructure to accommodate future residents.

The lack of information from the parties and the absence of a fully costed platform by the Conservatives has added to the lack of transparency confronting voters this election.

In Brampton, candidates from all six ridings were invited to participate in a series of federal election debates hosted by the Brampton Board of Trade on April 19 and 20—but the stage told a familiar story.

Four Liberal candidates showed up: Ruby Sahota, Shafqat Ali, Amandeep Sodhi, and Kamal Khera; but only two of six Conservative candidates in the city made an appearance: Taran Chahal and Sukhdeep Kang. Jeff Lal from the People’s Party of Canada, and Hafiz Muneeb Ahmed from the Centrist Party of Canada also attended.

Pierre Poilievre has repeatedly said that a fully costed platform will be released "soon". It is now expected Aprill 22, less than a week before the election.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer)

At a recent event hosted by Brampton’s chapter of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP), seniors gathered to raise issues directly with those seeking office. Three Liberals attended including Ali, Sodhi and Sonia Sidhu—but none of the Conservative candidates accepted the invitation.

Members of MIRANET, which represents Mississauga’s network of ratepayer and residents’ associations, told The Pointer earlier this month that many of its local groups were scrambling to organize candidate events but were unsuccessful.

Nathani says his concern for Peel voters regarding the lack of transparency this election is particularly problematic for those asking leaders to take action on climate change.

“If we had some more time, more face-to-face with our party leaders, more opportunities for them to attend debates and town halls in the lead up to this election, I think we could have at least drawn out what their promises and their campaigns would look like in terms of addressing climate change, but in such a short turnaround, it seems like the climate has been pushed to the back burner.”

Canadians, he said, have missed a “golden opportunity” to make this election about climate action, especially since the U.S. under Donald Trump’s administration will “be stepping away from some of the obligations on the international climate stage.”

“It would have been interesting to see whether any of our party leaders would commit more to making Canada a leader in the global fight on climate change, since there will be space for more leadership in that realm.”  

The Pointer's 2025 federal election coverage is partly supported by the Covering Canada: Election 2025 Fund. 

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