Fiery Bernier unlikely to hold much sway in Quebec

Tory front-runner unlikely to deliver province in election

As Conservative party members mail in ballots to choose a new leader, Maxime Bernier is ahead of the pack, with polls putting him nearly 10 percentage points ahead of rivals.

While he may be close to becoming leader of the Opposition, it’s highly unlikely he’ll be using Quebec as a springboard to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Bernier is without a doubt a formidable candidate. His strength is in finding pockets of support across the country, even uniting parts of Quebec with Alberta with his brand of fiery conservatism. Succeeding Stephen Harper as CPC leader when the winner is announced May 27 is within reach for Bernier, but galvanizing scattered niche libertarians does not a prime minister make.

Conservatives who were convinced expat investor and reality show star Kevin O’Leary would bulldoze his way to the PMO, rewriting conventions like bilingual leadership, have since learned there are Great Canadian Compromises that must be respected. Language will not be an issue for Bernier as it was for O’Leary. This presents Bernier with a certain edge, as he is easily more fluent in English than his closest rivals are in French. Unlike O’Leary, Bernier can at least speak to the entire nation.

There’s hope among some Conservatives that Bernier could aim for results in Quebec comparable to Brian Mulroney’s in 1984 and 1988 (58 and 63 seats respectively). This is pure fantasy. He likely won’t have much home field advantage.

Unlike Mulroney in those elections, Bernier would be facing a Liberal leader who is also a Quebecer, fluent in French, and holding a majority of seats in the province achieved following a shift to the left of the NDP on key issues in the 2015 campaign.

And Bernier’s being a Beauce francophone won’t be enough for his ideas to be given the time of day in Quebec.

Voters in large swaths of the province, most notably in Montreal and other urban centres, will view his attempts at taking an axe to government institutions with utmost scorn. Several of Bernier’s policies are non-starters for most Quebecers. His indifference to preventing climate change might be the most problematic.

On key issues like the environment and taxation, Quebecers would probably be more inclined to agree with candidates like Ontario MP Michael Chong (the only candidate supporting a carbon tax); Chong is the Conservative candidate with the best odds of defeating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2019, according to a recent Abacus Data poll.

Bernier would slash CBC-Radio-Canada’s budget and seems to devalue spending on culture, a key issue for francophones in particular and yet another area where he drastically parts from the Québécois mainstream.

Abolishing protectionist supply management in farming sectors like dairy or ending the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers’ monopoly (the province produces nearly three-quarters of the world’s supply) will also be unpopular policies. Quebecers are deeply attached to the concept of terroir, prioritizing local producers, particularly in agriculture. Bernier seems unencumbered by such bonds but, again, he is an exception.

Tragically for Conservatives, Chong and other more amenable candidates who would otherwise appeal to Quebecers on policy simply aren’t proficient or comfortable enough in French to make an impression. Other francophones in the race, like Steven Blaney, are too far to the right or otherwise failing to attract interest (despite Blaney’s valiant attempts to defend supply management, using glasses of milk as debate props).

If Bernier becomes the consensus choice, Conservatives are left with a paradoxical scenario where their only shot at defeating Trudeau is a Quebecer who won’t be able to deliver his home province.

Bernier being a so-called “Albertan from Quebec” is a decent line if the goal is to convince Conservative Canadians less familiar with la Belle Province that he is an inter-regional consensus-builder, but here, where the state is omnipresent, Bernier’s libertarianism will be largely disqualifying.