Poilievre talks community safety, drug crisis during Timmins stop

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is touring northern Ontario this week and rallying supporters.

On a visit to Timmins on Wednesday, he met with the local owners of a contract drilling company called NPHL Drilling.

“What I see is very hard-working, hopeful, common sense people," said Poilievre.

He also comes at a time when a grassroots movement is growing that is demanding a safer community. Poilievre said a local sports store owner told him that he was broken into again this week -- the fourth time in two years.

“Canada doesn’t have a lot of criminals, it has a tiny number of repeat offenders,” he said.

“Some of them have 150 or 200 offences on their rap sheet … My view is instead of letting them out so they can reoffend, destroy someone’s life and let them back in, let’s just keep them behind bars.”

When it comes to the opioid crisis, Poilievre said he would fund treatment centres, not safe consumption sites.

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre visits Timmins this week. A political analyst says the Tories could break through in the north in the next federal vote. (File)

“What I’ll do is I’m going to ban the hard drugs,” he said.

“I’m going to go after the hard criminals and I’m going to help the people who are addicted who are suffering from the disease of addiction get detox, recovery and treatment."

On the housing crisis, Poilievre said he would link the number of federal infrastructure dollars a municipal government gets to the number of houses it allows to be built.

“Let’s bring homes that people can afford by incentivizing the local city councils to speed up and lower the cost of building permits to build, build, build," he said.

The chair of the North Eastern Ontario Municipal Association thinks it's a good idea.

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“Any type of rethink that is looking at becoming more productive, flatlining the actual policies and procedures and creating incentives not just for municipalities but for both layers of government quite frankly," said Peter Politis.

Poilievre heads to Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury on Thursday; he'll round off the tour with a visit to North Bay on Friday.