OTTAWA - Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is promising that a government led by him would use the notwithstanding clause to override Charter rights to implement his tough-on-crime agenda — something no prime minister has ever done.
Poilievre was campaigning in Montreal on Monday, where he announced he would pass a law to allow judges to impose consecutive life sentences in cases of multiple murders. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2022 that imposing consecutive life sentences violates an offender's Charter rights.
The Conservative leader cited the case of Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six people in a 2017 mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque.
Bissonnette was convicted on six counts of first-degree murder and automatically sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. The Crown asked for his sentences to be consecutive, which would have made him ineligible for parole for 150 years. The trial judge imposed a parole ineligibility period of 40 years.
When the case went to the top court in 2022, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the extended period of parole ineligibility violated the Charter guarantee against cruel and unusual treatment because it could deny offenders a realistic prospect of being released before they die.
People who are eligible for parole are not guaranteed release and must make their case to the parole board. Poilievre said that shouldn't happen in the case of mass murder.
"You should never be able to force the families of the victims to have to come and testify at a parole hearing so that they relive the hell that you've exacted on them. This is completely obvious," he said.
Poilievre has promised mandatory life sentences for people convicted of trafficking a certain amount of fentanyl, human trafficking or smuggling more than 10 firearms. The Conservatives are also promising a "three-strikes rule" that would impose mandatory sentences on people convicted of three serious offences.
The Supreme Court has struck down a number of mandatory minimum sentences, leading legal experts to question whether Poilievre would use section 33 of the Charter — the notwithstanding clause — to make the changes he's promising.
"We will only use Section 33 to fight crime," Poilievre said Monday, arguing this will "protect the constitutional Charter rights of Canadians to life, liberty and security of the person."
Section 33 allows the government to override certain Charter rights for a limited period of time. It requires a review after five years.
It has been used pre-emptively by the Quebec government to pass legislation, including Bill 21, the law that forbids public sector workers from wearing religious symbols in the workplace, and Bill 96, which made controversial amendments to Quebec's Charter of the French language.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney was also in the Montreal area Monday. He stopped at Bombardier's facility in Dorval, Que., where he promised to overhaul defence procurement with modernized rules and a new procurement agency.
That pledge may sound familiar to voters: in 2019, the Liberals promised to "move forward with the creation of Defence Procurement Canada." Then-minister Harjit Sajjan's mandate letter in 2019 instructed him to "bring forward analyses and options" for the creation of such a department, but it has never materialized.
Defence procurement processes in Canada have long faced criticism from the Canadian Armed Forces and from outside experts, who say excessive bureaucracy leads to delays.
The Harper government introduced a defence procurement strategy in 2014 to try and tackle some of the issues that arise from having multiple departments involved in the process. The Trudeau government also aimed to speed procurement and improve transparency through its defence policy in 2017.
The Liberals are now pledging to make legislative changes as needed to centralize expertise from across government.
Carney said the new agency will have "greater powers and flexibility so that there are exceptions, for example, with respect to the level of competition that's required in terms of defence contracting, speed with which contracts can be struck, integration and a priority put on Canadian suppliers and Canadian supply chain."
Carney is also pledging to help the Canadian defence industry grow and diversify its markets through international exports, specifically by joining a defence initiative in Europe.
"There's an enormous opportunity as well, as we dramatically increase our defence spending, to ensure that as much as possible we have the maximum economic benefit here in Canada," he said.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, campaigning in Toronto on Monday morning, was focused on health care.
"We all have stories of going to an emergency room and waiting for hours and hours and wondering what's going to happen," he said.
Singh said if his party forms government, it will push provinces to fast-track accreditation for foreign-trained nurses and tie health-care funding to improvements in nurse-to-patient ratios and working conditions. He also pledged to put an end to agency nursing, saying it sets up a "two-tier system."
"Universal public health care is one of the things the Canadians are so proud of," he said.
He said his plan would ensure that 35,000 new nurses are hired in the next five years. A press release from the New Democrats said Canada is short 33,000 nurses. The party says it plans to actively recruit American nurses who may be looking to leave the country due to the policies of the Trump administration.
Singh said New Democrats pushed the Trudeau government to bring in dental-care and pharmacare programs.
"So if you want New Democrats to be in Ottawa to fight for you, you've got to vote for them," he said.
Singh said that while health care is not an official topic for the upcoming election debates — in Canada, delivery of health care is a provincial responsibility — he plans to bring it up.
All the party leaders are preparing for the French and English-language debates, which are being held in Montreal on Wednesday and Thursday.
The federal debate commission released its list of topics on Monday. They include affordability and the cost of living, energy and climate, leading in a crisis, public safety and security, and tariffs and threats to Canada.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford weighed in on the importance of those debates at Queen's Park on Monday, saying they're a critical part of the campaign. His former campaign director Kory Teneycke has been an outspoken critic of the federal Conservative campaign.
Teneycke said last week that the Tories' fall from a 25-point lead in the polls to trailing the Liberals by several points constitutes "campaign malpractice."
"To be very frank, if Kory was running that campaign, I don't think Mr. Poilievre would be in the position he's he's in right now," Ford told reporters. "Sometimes the truth hurts."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 14, 2025.
