Bernier backs off supply management
• Maxime Bernier, the libertarian candidate who lost the Conservative leadership to Andrew Scheer by a hair this May, says he will no longer push his party to end agricultural supply management.
Standing outside a Winnipeg hotel meeting room in which Scheer had earlier earned standing ovations from the Conservative caucus, a somewhat deflated Bernier explained Thursday he’s done fighting with his party on the issue and won’t put it on the floor of a Conservative Party policy convention next August.
“I won’t bring any policies to abolish supply management. If some members want, that will be their choice, but it won’t be mine,” Bernier said. “I will have other things to fight and we’ll see at that convention what will be the decision of the members on different issues.”
Bernier had argued during the long Conservative leadership campaign that supply management for egg, dairy and poultry industries harms consumers and limits competition. He had suggested ending supply management could prove a bargaining chip within a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Interest groups such as the Dairy Farmers of Canada and its counterpart in Quebec organized voters against Bernier, and several of Scheer’s strategists later said this may have played a role in the ultimate result. Bernier’s own riding, the agriculture-heavy Beauce, voted against him in the race.
Though he had professed a preference for the finance portfolio, Scheer instead made Bernier the industry critic in the shadow cabinet he unveiled last week.
Though he conceded a lot of people were expecting otherwise, Bernier said he’s happy with the choice. “The most important for me was to have an economic portfolio. And the industry portfolio, I think it’s a very important one, so I will be able to express my point of view on the economy with that portfolio and I am very happy about that.”
It should give Bernier an opportunity to make noise about another of the policies from his leadership campaign — an end to corporate welfare.
Still, Bernier stipulated the shadow cabinet will have to discuss their position on this during meetings in Winnipeg, and whatever they collectively decide “will be the position of the party.”
Conservatives are discussing their priorities for fall Thursday and Friday before heading back to parliament Sept. 18.