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Bernier makes an unconvincing populist
Maxime Bernier is set to reveal details about his new party, including its name Friday in Ottawa.
In an interview in his Parliament Hill office late Thursday, he admitted he has registered the People’s Party of Canada but that he also likes the Citizens’ Party.
Whatever Canada’s newest party ends up being called, some of its traits are already clear, and others will become less opaque after the press conference.
It is apparent, for example, that Bernier will oppose corporate welfare in all its forms, as he has done so since he told a bicycle factory owner in his riding of the Beauce, Que., that as Conservative industry minister he would not support quotas on cheap Chinese bicycles because it would increase the price of bikes for all Canadians.
We know that Bernier will advocate for an end to the cartel of supply management for dairy and poultry — a system he argues is unfair and regressive for lowincome earners. This has been another Bernier staple for more than a decade.
“People are fed up of politicians who say one thing one day and another the day after. What I’m looking for is doing politics like I believe. People like authenticity and I think I have the courage of my convictions and am authentic. That’s why people like what I’m doing,” he said.
But when we discuss the murky topic of what he calls “extreme multiculturalism” there is a sense that Maxime Bernier is not as authentic as he would like you to believe.
He makes much of the fact that he is not looking to promote policies simply to win votes. “I’m very different from other politicians,” he said.
What I’m asking is that if you come to Canada, you must share our Canadian core values. - MaxiMe Bernier
But elected officials tend not to be that distinct from one another — the business of reaching for power contorts them all in similar fashion.
On the diversity issue that sparked such controversy when he suggested on Twitter that there should be limits, Bernier’s thinking sounds muddled. He denies he’s playing the race card, invoking dog-whistle politics or engaging in the same nativism that resulted in him lampooning former Conservative leadership rival Kellie Leitch as a “Karaoke Trump.”
But when I suggested his references to “diversity” led many people to assume he is referring to people of colour, his denial ends up sounding like an affirmation.
“They are misinterpreting what I am saying. When I talk about diversity, I am talking about diversity of opinion, diversity of values, diversity of what you believe,” he said. “I’ll give you an example, if you have two people coming to Canada and one of them wants to kill Jewish people and the other one doesn’t, are we better to have two people who believe in different things or two people coming to Canada who don’t want to kill Jewish people?”
A charitable interpretation is that Bernier is musing aloud, that he hasn’t really thought it through and the example quoted came to him in the moment.
I remind him that in the Conservative leadership platform that will form the basis for the new party’s policies, he described tolerance for diversity as a “Canadian value.”
“I still believe that,” he said, before adding quickly, “I don’t believe in mass immigration.”
The leadership platform advocated the admission of 250,000 new entrants a year — a figure in line with the Harper government’s average intake.
Yet, the Trudeau Liberals have increased the level to 310,000 this year, a number the Conference Board of Canada said will help sustain long-term economic growth, given the rapidly aging population and low birth rate. The number is high by historic levels but reflects that the number of deaths will outpace the birth rate by the 2030s.
On the one hand, Bernier says he believes in immigration in line with the economic needs of the country but, on the other, says the rate should be reduced from the target that many economists believe will help drive growth.
The reasons are not clear. “I believe in unity also — sharing the same values. Diversity is good. This country is built on diversity and people coming from different religions and points of view,” he said. “But what I’m asking is that the people coming to Canada share our Canadian values — respect for rule of law, equality of men and women, the tolerance of diversity. What I’m asking is that if you come to Canada, you must share our Canadian core values.”
I ask him if he thinks there is a problem with integration of immigrants, given studies suggest employment, earnings and language outcomes between second-generation visible minority groups and whites with Canadian-born parents are negligible; that the children of immigrants learn Canadian values, social norms and official languages through schools, friends and neighbourhoods, all of which makes Canada a model for integration. Is he focusing on a non-existent problem?
“I’m saying we must question this extreme multiculturalism — people who come must integrate and yes, you’re right, they are doing (that). The history of immigration in Canada is great, it’s very positive. The change has happened under the Trudeau government. People who come here have more points if they speak English, they have more points if they speak French, so we have a system and the system was working for the last half century. The Trudeau government changed that in this mandate. I’m saying we must go back to what we did in the past.”
Trudeau’s track record is certainly wide open to criticism. This year just 57 per cent of immigrants will come from the economic class, compared to 63 per cent of the 260,411 entrants in the last full year of the Harper government (28 per cent will be family class, compared to 25 per cent in 2014, while 14 per cent are set to be refugees, in contrast to just 11 per cent four years ago).
The changes to increase family unification numbers by 20,000 people a year were transparent electoral bribes to immigrant communities in the suburbs.
But Bernier hasn’t made the thoughtful policy case for reversing those changes. Instead he has made vaguely illiberal noises that attract the kind of fellow travellers who do not respect the values the leader of Canada’s newest political party claims to espouse — equality, respect for the law and tolerance of diversity. Anyone who has followed Maxime Bernier’s career over the past decade or more knows it is just not him. Authentic? Not so much.
I’M SAYING WE MUST GO BACK TO WHAT WE DID IN THE PAST.
National Post jivison@postmedia.com Twitter.com/IvisonJ