Pierre Poilievre says he will sue pharmaceutical companies that 'flooded' streets with opioids if elected

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre says, if elected prime minister, he will sue pharmaceutical companies which “flooded our communities” with opioids while also making Windsor “the most competitive place to build everything” by speeding up permit processes for critical mineral mining.

Ahead of a weekend meet-and-greet at the Caboto Club, Poilievre sat down Friday with CTV News Windsor anchor Stefanie Masotti to continue his pitch to voters ahead of the next federal election. Among the main points of discussion were Windsor’s auto sector, the opioid crisis and Ambassador Bridge blockade.

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and length. A video of the full interview can be viewed at the top of this story.

Q: Your party lost two of the four ridings in the Windsor-Essex region following the previous federal election, quite substantially. Is that one of the reasons why you're in Windsor?

Poilievre: I'm here to actually reach out to the good, hard-working people in the Windsor region who, frankly, are falling further and further behind. After a half trillion dollars of inflationary deficits, the cost of living is rising faster than at any time in 40 years. Food prices are up 12 per cent, home prices have doubled and now mortgage rates are going up on those high prices. The cost of fuel, because of the NDP-Liberal carbon tax is becoming unaffordable. So you have these people here who are literally the backbone of our nation who are doing the nation's work but falling further behind. They’re young people who can't afford homes. So I'm here to talk about my plan to cap government spending to bring down the inflationary deficits, get rid of the Liberal-NDP carbon tax so that your fuel, food and heat are more affordable, get government gatekeepers out of the way so we can build more factories build more homes and make our dollars go further. That's why I'm here.

Q: As you mentioned, there are a lot of hard workers here in Windsor and the electrification of the auto sector is extremely important, especially for us. A lot of the time, we do have to compete with the U.S. in order to land investment. So will you match subsidies being offered by President Joe Biden?

Poilievre: We're going to make this the most competitive place to build everything, including electric cars, and everything that goes into making them. We need to speed up the permitting so that we can build factories more quickly. We need to lower the taxes on our factories, like getting rid of the carbon tax, and making energy more affordable for our factories. The minerals that go into those batteries should be mined in Canada. We have them but we can't get permits to dig them because government bureaucracy makes us wait seven to 10 years to get a mine approved. I want to speed that up so it can be done one or two years so that not only do Windsor workers build the batteries but Canadian miners harvest the raw ore that goes into those batteries so that we bring it home to our country, along with the paycheques, the technology, the tax revenues, our money and our jobs.

Q: To be clear, will you match the subsidies or not?

Poilievre: I have an election platform that will be costed, which will include our industrial plan, and I can tell you it will be more attractive to build these factories in Canada than in the United States when I'm Prime Minister of Canada.

Q: This week marks the one year anniversary of the Ambassador Bridge blockade. Do you support this form of protest, given that that it did hold billions of dollars in trade with the U.S.?

Poilievre: I don't support blockades. I believe that we should have law-abiding protests. I think the prime minister was wrong to attack truckers’ livelihoods simply because they made a vaccine decision that he didn't approve of. So I believe that law-abiding and peaceful protests should be allowed but a blockade should not.

Q: What do you have to say to those Windsorites who were blocking the Ambassador Bridge?

Poilievre: I would say, “Hold your protest in a lawful way.” If you want to protect your freedom, don't do it by blocking someone else's freedom. By all means, it's important to stand up to a Prime Minister who has insulted our working-class people and jabs his fingers in the faces of our people. We know after eight years of Justin Trudeau, our streets are more dangerous. Our costs are more exorbitant and unaffordable. Our people are more divided. We need to go in the exact opposite direction: bring down crime, bring down the cost of living and let's unite our people.

Q: Some people argue that you just wanted to cater to anti-vaxxers to mobilize your base. What do you say to that?

Poilievre: I believe in free choice. People should have the freedom to make their own personal medical decisions and live with those decisions. I don't believe the government should discriminate against anybody for a personal decision. Look, we know that Justin Trudeau was just trying to divide people. Bill Morneau, his former finance minister, has said that he used the vaccine issue as a wedge issue. We shouldn't divide our people. Why does he want to divide people? People are suffering after eight years. People can't afford their groceries. There are people in their mid-20’s who can't even dream of owning a house. It wasn't like this eight years ago. It is the result of these disastrous inflationary policies which have left our working class under siege. It’s meant to distract people from the fact that they can't afford food and rent. He's trying to divide them against their neighbours. I'm going to end “divide and conquer” and, instead, unite people for hope.

Q: Canada’s job numbers were released Friday which shows good news for Windsor. We went from top spot for unemployment to fourth across Canada with 150,000 new jobs. However, you're still critical of Justin Trudeau’s record on the economy. Why?

Poilievre: Because people can't afford to live. Your paycheque doesn't go as far as it used to. Inflation has been rising faster than wages. In every one of the last 24 months. The cost of food is up 12 per cent. That's a 40-year high in food price inflation. House prices have doubled. The interest rates are going through the roof and energy costs are unaffordable. Those are all attributable, in part at least, to his inflationary policies. When you send a half-trillion dollars of inflationary deficits, he's literally doubled our national debt. All that money bids up the cost of goods and makes life more expensive. When you bring in a carbon tax on gas, heat and groceries, people have to pay more. I would cap government spending to get rid of those inflationary deficits. I think people feel hopeless right now. After eight years of Trudeau, the streets are more dangerous, violent crime is up 20 to 32 per cent, we've had 30,000 people die of opioid overdoses and our young people don't know how to live or start a family because they can't afford a home. So we need to change the course and direction of this country by making our dollars go further, by cracking down on the most serious violent offenders to make our streets safe again and begin by uniting our country bringing it home.

Q: And how would you change course, particularly on opioid overdoses? Here in Windsor, city council is continuing to look at different ways to do that. So what are your suggestions? What do you plan to do?

Poilievre: The most important thing we can do is recovery and treatment. That's what they're doing successfully in Alberta where they've doubled the number of treatment beds and they've been able to lower the number of overdoses. I believe that that approach allows us to rescue our brothers, sisters, our neighbors and our friends. I don't think legalizing heroin, fentanyl and other deadly drugs as the NDP and Liberals propose will help. I think it will only flood our streets with more dangerous toxins that will kill people. Rather, let's rescue our people with more treatment and more recovery. I'm going to sue the pharmaceutical companies that flooded our communities with these drugs in the first place for their own profit and I'm going to get massive awards from that. I'm going to use their money to pay for the treatment that our people need.