OTTAWA—Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau will beef up his campaign promise on firearms by pledging an additional $250 million to Canadian cities to help combat guns and gangs when the party unveils its campaign platform Sunday in Mississauga, the Star has learned.

The money would flow directly to Toronto and other cities for community programming to help curb gun violence, a Liberal source said Saturday.

“We’re going to continue the fight against gun-related violence,” the source said.

The money — $50 million a year over five years — would be provided to cities to assist communities at risk. Currently, the Liberal government allocates about $100 million a year to such efforts.

“We will work directly with municipalities on areas that they deem important and require assistance to make safer from gun violence and from gangs,” said the source, who spoke on background ahead of the official announcement.

The additional funding pledged for guns and gangs comes on top of the party’s earlier announcement that a Liberal government would ban “assault-style” firearms and work with the provinces to allow municipalities to ban handguns.

That promise stopped short of a national handgun ban, a move the Liberals rejected as too expensive for uncertain benefit to impose nationally.

Instead, the Liberals propose a buyback of legally owned so-called assault-style weapons, with a two-year amnesty for legal owners. No cost for this program has yet been specified.

The new funding is one gun-related element among others expected to be revealed Sunday when the Liberal party will take the wraps off its complete platform.

Activists like Louis March of the Zero Gun Violence Movement say all levels of government need to work more closely to come up with a strategic action plan to address the root causes of gun violence.

In a recent interview he said that includes tackling poverty, housing shortages, boosting mental health resources in communities at risk, while stemming the flow of guns at the border.

“We cannot police all the borders,” he said. “So it goes back to economics. If there’s a demand for violence, there will be a demand for guns, and if there’s a demand, there will be a supply. What’s missing is the courageous will to do what is right.”

In November 2017, the Liberal federal government announced approximately $327.6 million over five years, starting in 2018–19, and $100 million annually thereafter, in new federal funding to tackle the increase in gun related violence and gang activity in Canada.

The new promise appears to boost the annual commitment to $150 million a year.

The Conservatives have proposed to cost-share new anti-gang law enforcement initiatives with provinces and territories. Leader Andrew Scheer has pledged tougher sentences for offenders convicted of violent gun crimes or gang-related violence, including lifetime gun ownership bans. Scheer would end bail and revoke parole for repeat gang offenders, crack down on gun smuggling and on those who legally buy guns then re-sell them to criminals, and make it easier to prosecute suspected gang members.

The Liberal campaign co-chairs Ralph Goodale and Mona Fortier will speak about the policy promises in Ottawa with Trudeau scheduled to speak at an event at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus.

The party’s 2015 87-page platform was titled “a new plan for a strong middle class” and included the promise of a tax cut on the middle income bracket.

The Liberals’ 2019 campaign so far has built on that theme, which will be furhter underscored in Sunday’s platform release.

The party has already some key elements of its platform, including:

$6 billion over four years for healthcare reforms to provide better access to family doctors, mental health services, home care and palliative care as well as the promise of national pharmacare.

Removing federal taxes on the first $15,000 of income, meaning potential savings of $292 for individuals. This promise would phase out the benefit for individuals earning more than $148,000 and eliminate the extra benefit completely for individuals earning more than $210,000. The estimated cost to the federal treasury in foregone revenue is about $6 billion.

Creating 250,000 spaces to provide before and after school care for children under the age of 10; boost the Canada Child Benefit for children under one year of age by 15 per cent, or up to about $1,000, starting next July; and extend maternity leave to those parents who don’t qualify for paid leave under EI. These measures are expected to cost about $800 million in 2021, according to the Liberal party.

Other pledges include changes to an existing program to provide more assistance to first-time home buyers; the promise to retrofit 1.5 million homes to make them more energy efficient and protected against storms related to climate change.

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Along with the platform, the party will also detail the full costing of its promises, along with an independent review of that planned spending by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The Liberals promised in 2015 to balance the budget by the current fiscal year. However, that promise was tossed aside early in their mandate and currently the deficit now sits at about $14 billion.

The Liberal official declined to speak about the impact of the latest campaign promises on the bottom line. The Liberals have said that their fiscal goal is to continue to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, which currently is about 30.9 per cent.

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