Bernier wants TV debate rules broken
Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, won’t be allowed to join the two TV election debates in October. There’s a simple reason for that: he doesn’t qualify.
The PPC must pass two out of three tests: have at least one elected MP (that’s Bernier), run candidates in at least 90 per cent of ridings nationwide, and/or have a real chance of electing some of them. It didn’t. Only a tiny number of voters said they’d vote for Bernier, even in ridings he chose for polling by the debates commission.
Those are the rules. Canada is a “rule-of-law country,” as Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said long ago of the Huawei arrest case. The U.S. is not. That means that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, the Bloc Québécois’s Yves-François Blanchet, the Green party’s Elizabeth May, and the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh will join for the Oct. 7 English-language debate and the French-language one on Oct. 10.
See how well-organized our debates are? We don’t want a U.S. Democratic debate debacle packed with candidates, some of them nutty, fighting to say very little about nothing much.
Bernier says it’s not fair. “It won’t be a real debate if I’m not there.” He lumps all the other parties together as leftleaning, which is news to Scheer, whereas only he stands out. That last part is true: Bernier would likely end the policy of multiculturalism, cut immigration and international aid, reopen an abortion debate and dismiss the climate crisis as hysteria.
But as Star columnist Chantal Hébert pointed out, Singh made an unfortunate remark. He said Bernier should be shunned not because his party doesn’t meet the rules, but because his ideas are odious. Singh is better placed than other candidates to know this, but it shouldn’t be relevant.
Yes, there was a time when Canada could have heard extremist talk — Hébert mentions the Reform Party years — and dismissed it. But we live in different times. Populism started out slowly in the U.S. and emerged in Brazil and the Philippines, returned to Russia, and is close to being tested in the U.K. Our era is the sleep of reason while madness travels. As a Trump-created recession comes our way, hard times will bring cruelty.
Canadians do indeed believe in peace, order and good government. They believe in politeness, the essence of which is biting your tongue. How bad could Bernier’s party be? Journalist Alex Boutillier attended its first national convention in Gatineau recently, attended by 200, or possibly 500 people, and it was extraordinary.
“For us, there is no taboo subject. We are not afraid to tackle controversial issues. And we are speaking the truth,” Bernier said. In fact, party members went into contortions not to appear what everyone says they are: racist. Instead of bemoaning dairy subsidies, they obsessed about the subject of Muslims, which they call “political Islam.” I don’t know what that is.
“Islamist entryism [I don’t know what that is either] and the adaptation of political Islam is rotting away at our society like syphilis,” supporter Benjamin Dichter said. Why syphilis? Why not measles? Spit it out, sir. But he won’t.
A candidate who immigrated to Canada from Malaysia 26 years ago says she is running for the People’s Party in Markham-Unionville to cut immigration. She refuses to expand on her reasoning, which is doubtless tangled.
If Bernier goes on TV, he won’t open Pandora’s Box. He will open Pandora’s Chest Freezer. It will contain racism. He will talk about immigrants ruining Canada. Once he has said it, it’s out there, and he’ll be the Pied Piper who emboldened Canadians to rail against refugees and ethnicities they don’t like.
It won’t be the Scots. There will be spurious complaints about people of colour and their annoying habits, Nigerians sneaking across the border, Indigenous people not paying taxes, etc. Hate used to reside in hearts. Now it will be loud and looking for victims.
Canadians like peace, order and good government. We are polite. We believe in free speech but within limits. We bite our tongue, and that’s a good thing. Don’t let Bernier break the rules. Don’t open that box of sulphur.