As the messages start to sharpen as the election gets ever closer, boy howdy did Andrew Scheer decided to go all in on lying to Canadians. From a campaign stop in Fredericton, Scheer claimed that a Liberal-NDP coalition would hike the GST to seven percent, and then put out a press release claiming all kinds of other tax increases and cuts to social transfers to pay for their platform – a ridiculous figure he reached by adding the two total costs together, never mind that a) it doesn’t work like that, and b) IT WAS A COMPLETE AND TOTAL LIE. And sure, reporters called out that it was a lie, but Scheer shrugged and said it wasn’t misinformation because he didn’t trust Justin Trudeau. Erm, it doesn’t work like that. Meanwhile, the premier of New Brunswick was also at the rally, grousing that Quebec is the “favoured child” of Confederation because he wants an imaginary pipeline to flow to his province despite there being no actual economic case for it, and the inconvenient fact that his province gets far more equalization per capita than Quebec does. (Good luck with Scheer keeping most of his Quebec seats with rhetoric like this, by the way). Scheer’s tour later stopped in Beauce, where he chugged milk to troll Maxime Bernier, and Drummondville.

Seriously? https://t.co/JIW1aaXQLW pic.twitter.com/HYxD5qbaJU

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) October 18, 2019

So it turns out that Scheer is not only lying that the Liberals and NDP would raise the GST, he’s also claiming in a press release that they would raise income taxes in lower brackets. Which is, again, a lie. #Elxn43 pic.twitter.com/PB6stMeScl

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) October 18, 2019

Justin Trudeau started his day in Whitby, where he had to refute Scheer’s latest lie, and then mumbled some stuff about maybe expanding abortion services in New Brunswick. He then made stops in Orillia, Barrie, and Vaughan. He’ll head to Calgary later tonight, so that could be interesting.

Jagmeet Singh held rallies on Vancouver Island – hoping to keep the Greens from gaining ground there – and started playing coy again about how he’d be in a hung parliament, and hand waved about the Trans Mountain Pipeline as a possible condition for support.

Other election stories:

• Here’s a look at the Liberals in Alberta trying to keep (and possibly grow) their seat count in the province.
• The Liberals’ star environmental candidate says more pipelines may not get built because of the carbon budget. (Or, because there’s little economic case for them?)
• Andrew Scheer says he supports Indigenous children affected by the on-reserve child welfare system getting some form of compensation (but gave no details).
• The National Post finds a Conservative candidate concerned about the environment.

Good reads:

• Here’s a recounting of the Greta Thunberg-led climate rally in Edmonton yesterday.
• Anti-abortion groups are trying to get their members into jobs in MPs’ offices.
• Here’s a look at how political fundraising has changed over the past 15 years.
• CBC’s data crunchers tracked how much unions and corporations have been contributing to third-party advertisers as part of this election cycle.
• Chantal Hébert foresees few avenues of cooperation between the Conservatives and any of the other third parties in a minority situation.
• Heather Scoffield describes how she is letting her teenagers determine her vote on Monday.
• Supriya Dwivedi goes through the history of “secularism” in Quebec that led to Bill 21, the lack of federal leaders’ courage, and other traditions Quebec should look to.
• Colby Cosh applies the lens of the “de-platforming” debate to the Bill 21 question, and wonders if this isn’t helping to drive the resurgence of the Bloc.
• My weekend column looks at the threats about national unity that are being bandied about in the election, and how it’s not Trudeau that’s behind them.

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