Meet Maxime Bernier’s new hard-right party
Conservatives are like communists; they never get along. So Conservative Party splittist Maxime Bernier is welcoming disaffected Canadian conservatives to a new day, a new party. It is the PPC, the People’s Party of Canada, so named because the current CPC apparently doesn’t like people — we just don’t care for them, don’t know why — and apparently work to repel them.
The party will of course be referred to as Maxime Bernier’s PP.
Did no one give this a run-through? Say it out loud? Perhaps Bernier forgot that in 2000, Conservative splittists initially formed the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party, or CCRAP, pronounced as “C-CRAP.”
All the laughter died in sorrow. Again, does no one check these things?
It is possible, of course, that they did and laughed and tanked the party as a secret joke, ha ha.
There is a Loblaws near my house in the east end of Toronto. We drive past the back parking lot to the front via a small delivery alley at the side of the store.
Teens drove maniacally on the lot at night, so Loblaws put in speed bumps to slow them down and politely posted signs that read SPEED BUMP.
Naturally, they didn’t read that way for long. The signs would read PEE BUM. And maintenance would paint it over. The next week the signs would read PEE PUMP. That’s not the funny part. The funny part is that this went on for years and I laughed every single time.
As the little blue ball that is our world spun around the sun, as governments fell and rose again, as the hippity-hoppity of life consumed us, you could count on one thing: that teenagers devoted to their craft knew that everyone likes a potty joke or two.
I found this evidence of Canadian winsomeness reassuring.
To this day I think “pee bum” every time I drive by. Just as every time I see Bernier speak, I will think “peepee” and I will laugh.
I mean, I will laugh anyway because it’s Bernier, the hapless minister canned by Stephen Harper in 2008 over a girlfriend with links to the Hells Angels. Bernier is a simpleton radiating self-love and a coward who is coy about Canadian hard-right populism.
Premier Doug Ford also alleges he represents “the people” although he told zero people he would use the notwithstanding clause to kill local elections. U.S. President Trump’s base is “real people” and “the uneducated,” but he despises “dumb Southerners,” “retards,” Black people, women ... Really he loves only one people: himself. Donald Trump, party of one.
Visit the PPC website and see what kind of people are Bernier’s people. May I say that Trump is an honorary member of the “Pee Party”? There, I said it.
Bernier hates equalization payments and carbon taxes, will end “corporate welfare” but lower the corporate tax rate from 15 per cent to 10 per cent, will bring the private sector into health care, abolish the capital gains tax and the maple syrup cartel, kill most foreign aid, and end immigration of people he considers dark and dodgy.
He expects immigrants and refugees to share “Canadian values such as the equality of men and woman (sic)” but does not mention helping women. In fact, he has said he’ll allow a free vote on abortion rights. Oh.
Bernier says he’ll stand up for rural Canadians in eight different ways but doesn’t mention cities — we don’t even rate a handgun ban — despite most Canadians being urban. The PP caters to insecure rural white gun-owning men, and immigrants who fit in, possibly by being rural white gun-owning men, but Bernier doesn’t have the courage to say that.
They are people who want to pay for their own health care, let corporations be kings, be uni-coloured, and buy cheaper stuff. They are basically Americans, which we will never be until the Americans invade and insist.
Bernier will succeed in hiving off the Angry Pajamas of the Conservative Party, giving Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer a lighter load. The NDP are Mensheviks and the Liberals may win again. Scheer is a decent person who would have resisted being pushed into a racist corner. Now he is free.
Heather Mallick is a columnist based in Toronto covering current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @HeatherMallick
The party caters to insecure rural white gun-owning men, and immigrants who fit in … but Bernier doesn’t have the courage to say that