Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is casting himself as a pro-police candidate today, promising to hire more RCMP officers and deploy them to the Greater Toronto Area and British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.
O’Toole says the 200 additional Mounties would fight against gangs, as well as drug and gun smuggling.
O’Toole has said he considers organized criminal groups and guns smuggled into Canada from the United States as the real problem with gun violence.
His party has promised to withdraw a Liberal bill that created additional background checks for gun license applicants as well as a ban on 1,500 guns described as “assault-style weapons” by the government.
At a campaign stop in Markham, Ont., Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau accused O’Toole of wanting to take Canada backwards on gun safety.
O’Toole is also promising to spend $100 million over five years to train “non-provincial” police officers to fight cybercrime, sexual exploitation and domestic violence.
He says a Conservative government would also spend $25 million to reduce the number of Indigenous people in Canadian prisons.