OTTAWA — The waning days of the federal election campaign saw voters turn out in record numbers for advance polls and party leaders attempt to poke holes in each others' platforms.
Elections Canada said in a news release Tuesday that the four days of advance polling between Friday and Monday set a new record for turnout, with 7.3 million people casting ballots early.
That's up 25 per cent from the 5.8 million people who took part in advance voting in the 2021 federal election.
Elections Canada said it made adjustments to deal with long lineups at polling stations in the early part of the long weekend.
Voters can still cast a ballot early at an Elections Canada office until 6 p.m. on Tuesday.
With less than a week to go until election day on April 28, federal leaders were making their closing pitches Tuesday to voters across the country,
The Conservative campaign released its costed election platform a day after the end of advance voting. The Liberals and NDP both released their platforms on Saturday, the second day of advance polls.
The Conservative party platform forecasts $100 billion in deficits over the next four years, along with billions of dollars in tax cuts and new revenues.
That document also clarifies some earlier Conservative pledges — such as the plan to slash the bottom income tax rate in Canada to 12.75 per cent from 15 per cent, a measure that the platform now shows would be phased in over four years.
Conservative Leader Poilievre said at a campaign event in Vaughan, Ont., on Tuesday that his plan would cut bureaucracy, government consulting and some foreign aid and "unleash a half-trillion dollars of economic growth" in the resource development and housing sectors.
Both Liberal Leader Mark Carney and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh attacked the Conservatives' numbers on Tuesday.
"If you look at what they're proposing, the numbers are not based in any reality," Singh said at an event in Vancouver.
The NDP leader said he would push back against cuts in the Liberal and Conservative platforms.
The Liberal platform promises $28 billion in savings over four years through "increased government productivity."
The Liberals would add roughly $129 billion worth of new measures, including a one percentage-point tax cut to the lowest income bracket that would add to the deficit over the next four years.
Carney also has pledged to separate the budget into operating and capital streams, and to balance the operating side by 2028-2029. But he would still run a $48 billion deficit on the capital side for that fiscal year.
The Conservative platform projects a $14 billion deficit by 2028.
The Conservatives' figures include forecasts of billions of dollars in boosted revenue from building additional homes, scrapping the industrial carbon price and cracking down on tax evasion, among other sources.
But Carney claimed at an event in Trois-Rivières, Que., on Tuesday that his own party's plan would project a budget surplus in five years' time if it used the same growth assumptions informing the Conservatives' platform.
Carney said his platform does not "rely" on rosy predictions in a global climate of economic uncertainty tied to the United States' trade war.
"We are in a crisis. In a crisis, you always plan for the worst, you don't hope for the best, and you don't make those types of assumptions," he said.
"The Conservatives, who have no experience managing crises ... they don't know what they're doing, so they make those assumptions."
The Liberal platform is based on real gross domestic product projections the parliamentary budget officer released in March that forecast growth of 1.7 per cent of GDP this year and 1.5 per cent in 2026.
The Conservative campaign did not respond to a request for clarity on GDP estimates underpinning the platform.
The International Monetary Fund released an updated World Economic Outlook on Tuesday that projected scaled-down growth of 1.4 per cent for Canada this year and 1.6 per cent in 2026. Those figures are down 0.6 percentage points and 0.4 points, respectively, from the IMF's previous forecasts in January.
The report said global economic risks are tilted towards the worse outcomes due to trade uncertainty and market volatility.
Carney toured through Quebec on Tuesday promising to protect residents of the province from U.S. President Donald Trump. He laid out plans to maintain supply management for farmers, increase funding for CBC/Radio-Canada and move forward with major nation-building projects through Quebec.
Singh was campaigning in Metro Vancouver and his home riding of Burnaby Central on Tuesday before he headed to Edmonton for a rally with Alberta's former NDP premier Rachel Notley.
— with files from Kyle Duggan and Sarah Ritchie in Ottawa and Nick Murray in Vaughan, Ont.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 22, 2025.
Craig Lord, The Canadian Press
