Maxime Bernier: An Endorsement

 

Max Bernier

Everybody seems to be endorsing someone in the current Canadian federal election, over the last few days. Probably nobody cares; I’m just a guy; but it is time to again endorse Maxime Bernier.

Erin O’Toole has been warning against vote-splitting on the right. “If you want to get rid of Justin Trudeau, there’s only one choice.” This does not sound reasonable. O’Toole has run on a platform barely distinguishable from Trudeau’s; that makes the stakes trivial. Moreover, if the polls are right, we are going to get a minority government. If it is a Tory majority, they are going to need the cooperation of the NDP or Bloc to stay in power; this will pull them further left. 

So why waste your vote?

A vote for the PPC that is a vote for change. If we can get PPC representation in parliament, we can change the political discourse. We will start pulling the debate to the right, just as the NDP and the CCF before it have pulled it to the left for so long. Making the Liberals the Natural Governing Party.

I actually do not care much about Bernier’s signature issue this iteration, opposition to vaccine mandates. I do not think vaccine mandates are that sinister. They are an imposition on our freedom, but they seem reasonable; even Jason Kenney explains “we have run out of options.” As with the War Measures Act, when the emergency passes, such restrictions have always in the past been rescinded.

What does alarm me is the tendency to scapegoat the unvaccinated. A recent correspondent wrote “They're not listening to the bells in any temple except their own. They cling to their ‘rights’ without any corresponding sense of ‘responsibility’ to the wider community. And yet, they're the ones currently clogging our hospital systems.”

Logically, if the vaccines work, there is no reason to worry about anyone else being vaccinated, so long as you are. If the vaccines do not work, there is no reason to get vaccinated. 

So the issue is only the secondary one of “crowding the ICUs.” Others might miss treatments. Politicians like Trudeau are lying and stirring up hate by suggesting it is more than this. The appeal is “fifteen days to slow the spread.” Oops, sorry, make that eighteen months and counting.

But it is ambitious to expect many more than 72.9%--the current figure--to agree to vaccination. For some people—kids, for example, or people with allergies—the risk of vaccination is greater than the risk from the virus. Others will have phobias about vaccinations; phobia is not trivial. Others, especially racial minorities, do not trust the health system or the government. Do we want to target racial minorities for general condemnation?

The bottom line is, we are probably near the limit of what we can accomplish without coercive measures. Coercive measures are not warranted, and must be anathema. So insisting on vaccination rates higher than this may only be postponing our return to normalcy indefinitely.

But we are also near the limit we were told would lead to at least partial herd immunity; the more so when you realize that some of the unvaccinated will have already had COVID. Presumably, at 72.9%, almost everyone at high risk has been vaccinated. The wisest course might be to drop all restrictions and let the virus itself give us herd immunity quickly. The UK government seems to have decided on this course. 

Whether we do this or not, that it is a reasonable option means it is a misdirection to blame the continued lockdowns or the persistence of the virus on the unvaccinated.

The idea is being pushed aggressively by politicians and health officials, I suspect, because they have a tiger by the tail. If they lift restrictions, cases will spike for a time, and they will be blamed. Jason Kenney is living through this nightmare now in Alberta. If they continue the restrictions, people will blame them as they lose their savings, lose their jobs, lose their businesses, lose their homes, inflation gets worse and food becomes a problem too. Those in charge need a scapegoat, to deflect blame from themselves, and to avoid having to make a tough decision. “The unvaccinated” serves their purpose.

We ought not to fall for it. For one thing, if we do, innocents will suffer. For another, so long as we do, lockdowns will probably continue, as no politician has the nerve to end them.

Bernier says he will end them.

And his other policies are even better.

The Max Bernier Show

Maxime Bernier and the People's Party of Canada have launched their own YouTube channel. I found the first episode unexciting, pretty wonky, but it should be worth keeping an eye on going forward.

The Kinsella Tapes

CBC has apparently gotten hold of tapes of Warren Kinsella discussing his work on a backdoor social media campaign to smear Maxime Bernier,

Aside from any moral issues, this strikes me as evidence of gross political malpractice by Scheer's team.

First question: where do you suppose the CBC got the tapes?

Almost necessarily, from someone at Kinsella's firm, hoping to discredit the Conservatives.

It is as though the Scheer team handed a loaded revolver to a known enemy, and painted a target on their t-shirt. What did they expect?

Even apart from this, it makes dubious political sense to try to character assassinate the smaller party over to their right. Granted, the PPC might cause some vote splitting. At the same time, their presence forces the debate rightward, presenting the argument for policies near Scheer's on the spectrum, and making his own look more moderate. Slandering their views as "racist" risks tarring the Conservatives as well, by association. Just in case the adversary missed with that loaded pistol, Scheer's men had a loaded shotgun ready, pointed at their foot.

After all, Bernier a couple of years ago came within a few votes of becoming the Tory leader.

It's all so dumb it almost seems easier to believe Scheer is secretly a Liberal himself.

On Real Leadership

I did not support Trump among his Republican challengers back in 2015-16. Had I been the Republican Party, I would have gone with Jeb Bush. The conventional choice. I privately endorsed Trump in the general, but through gritted teeth. Ironically, I feared that if Hillary were elected, we would all have to go through the turmoil of an impeachment investigation. Over her emails. Which also suggested, it seemed to me, background collusion with either Russia or China. Mere incompetence did not seem a sufficient explanation.

By now, like many others, I am inclined to think that Trump has been an unusually good president. Not just because of a prosperous economy. He knows how to make deals. And that turns out to be an extremely valuable asset in a president.

I did not support Ronald Reagan, either, back in his primary runs. In 1976, sticking with an incumbent president, Gerald Ford, seemed obviously the right path for the Republicans. Even though I would have voted, instead, for almost any Democrat. In the 1980 Republican primaries, I thought they should have gone with George (HW) Bush. In the general, I would have preferred Reagan to Carter, but again, by default.

It shows how wrong I can be.

But not just me. Reagan came to power only due to exceptional circumstances. Trump’s rise was also exceptional: he won the general by a hair, and defying all predictions. So was Lincoln’s—the presidency was his first significant public office. So was Churchill’s, pulled in from the wilderness in a general emergency. Even after he saved the world in the Second World War, people were reluctant to vote for him.

Why are we all like this? Why do we actually resist voting for the best leaders?

I am drawn to this reflection by the odd refusal by the Dems to give Tulsi Gabbard their attention and support. It seems bizarre and almost suicidal to go instead for obvious old hacks like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.

It is, surely, a love of the familiar. The same instinct that brings us xenophobia. People move along in their accustomed mental ruts, and there is an instinctive fear of anything outside them: fear of the unknown.

The problem is that Gabbard, like Reagan or Churchill, does not simply parrot the expected line on the issues. Yet this is a necessary trait in a leader: that they think for themselves, and have core principles.

You see the same thing in the arts—perhaps in all human endeavor. People resist anything that is genuinely fresh and new. They do not want their accustomed ways disturbed. They want décor.

And I, it seems, on the evidence of Trump or Reagan, am as bad on this as everyone.

But then too, there is a reason for this. At least sometime this gut conservatism is wise; that is probably why we have it. It is a good survival mechanism to mistrust the unfamiliar.

Hitler, too, was a leader who came out of nowhere and who seemed to be saying something both new and principled. Or Mao. If some large, impressive, and previously unknown creature emerges from the nearby forest, it is wise to be cautious.

If we could figure out how to make the distinction, between the principled genius and the dangerous demagogue, it would be the key to a great improvement in the human condition.

I think there is a distinction. Leaders like Hitler or Mao looked as though they were acting on principle, but actually had no principles. They were driven only by power. They chose their new principles only strategically to appeal in a time of turmoil. William Manchester, who followed his rise closely, noticed that Hitler said something completely different to each audience--whatever he expected they most wanted to hear. This is why Nazi ideology has always been hard to pinpoint. Mao, similarly, was in no way consistent in terms of which faction he supported within the CCP.

So the best test is a moral test: if a candidate has visibly done something that seems to go against their own career interest, on what seems a matter of principle, they are probably the real deal.

Churchill is an obvious example of this, in his principled opposition to dealing with Hitler and the Nazis, in his warnings of impending war. I think Tulsi Gabbard is also in this category: she hurt her career as a rising Democrat star last cycle by dissenting from the efforts of the DNC to fix the primaries for Clinton. Trump perhaps qualifies with his attacks on the press and political correctness. They have turned out well for him, but is he so savvy as to have foreseen this, or was he just determined to do it anyway?

On this same test, I think Maxime Bernier is the real deal in the current Canadian election. He did not seem to be thinking strategically in coming out against supply management. It is supposed to be an unpopular stand in Quebec. He definitely seemed to buck his own best interests in terms of seeking power by splitting from the Conservatives a year ago. In the normal run of politics, we would have expected Scheer to lose the next election, resign, and then Bernier would be the front-runner to replace him. He gave that up, apparently on principle.

I wonder if they could still coax him back, if Scheer comes up short.

On this same test, the Liberals, if they lose their majority or worse, ought to turn to Jody Wilson-Raybould or Jane Philpott as new leader.

An Endorsement of Maxime Bernier

Reasons to Vote for Bernier

Maxime Bernier

The Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP are all running on the same platform. Of course, the NDP always says this of the other two parties; but it is true this time of the NDP as well. This is deadly for democracy—it withholds policy choices from the electorate, allowing all to be decided by some unaccountable elite. Aside from one’s position on the issues, it is important for the sake of Canadian democracy that we vote for Maxime Bernier. Vote for Bernier now, or forever hold your peace.

There is a concurrent effort by a faction of the population to prevent Bernier from being heard, and even by violent means. A recent event in Hamilton with Dave Rubin required police protection, and was almost cancelled. This again makes it vital for democrats to vote Bernier. Such tactics must not succeed.

Even leaving this aside, Bernier is the only candidate running who is qualified to be prime minister. It is as my friend says, of Scheer, Singh, and May: “can you imagine any of these representing Canada abroad?” As with Trudeau, none has done anything particularly impressive in either politics or any other field. No career in senior cabinet positions, no Nobel Prizes, no Canada Steamship Lines, no great battles over principle fought.

Bernier alone has held senior cabinet positions, including Foreign Affairs, often considered the number two spot in cabinet. He had a prominent career in business before entering politics. He led, alone, on the issue of supply management.

Bernier deserves support as well for showing principle: he came out against supply management in Quebec, home to much of the dairy industry, even though representing a riding in which dairy farming was a major business. He probably lost the Conservative leadership on this issue—the dairy lobby backed Scheer as a result.

If we want honest politicians, such commitment to principle must be rewarded, even regardless of the particular principle involved. If we want true leaders, we need someone who, like Bernier, shows the ability to lead on an issue.

With his free market creed, Bernier represents a promising trend in Quebec politics, away from the eternal and unproductive federalism-separatism issue, towards a more healthy liberal-conservative divide. The CAQ has risen provincially on this basis; only Bernier embodies it at the federal level. For the sake of Canadian unity, and for Quebec’s economic health, it would be a very good thing if this focus on practical rather than ethnic issues were to succeed. Accordingly, those who want Canadian unity and prosperity ought to vote Bernier.

All of this is without even considering the rights and wrongs of Bernier’s stands on the issues. Even if you disagree with him on these, you should vote PPC. But now let’s look at the issues.

Bernier, and only Bernier, wants to end the government-enforced cartel that forces up the price of milk, cheese, and eggs. Legally mandated cartels are intrinsically violations of human rights, giving special privileges to a favoured group. They also violate good economic principles, encouraging inefficiencies. These particular restraints on trade have been a stumbling block in negotiating better trade deals with other countries; other parts of our economy have had to suffer for it. Subsidizing the dairy and egg industry deprives us of the right to object to similar subsidies elsewhere, which prevent Canadians from entering those markets.

Most importantly, these particular price controls are a cruel imposition on the poor. The rich do not spend their surfeit on extra eggs or milk; these are staples. Eggs, milk, and cheese are in most places the cheapest protein sources. This is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

And it is in particular babies who need milk to thrive.

Bernier, and only Bernier, also wants a values test on new immigrants. This caught a lot of hostile attention in the last Conservative leadership campaign; we all hate values any more. But it is obviously necessary. Canada is not based on ethnicity, as most states are. So what can it possibly be based on, what brings us together in this shared enterprise, if it is not shared values? Without a strong shared commitment here, Canada is not viable. It will fall apart at the next real stress.

Nor is it hard or should it be controversial to come up with such shared values. Shared values are plainly stated in the Canadian Constitution.

It ought to be self-evident that all new immigrants should sign on: this is the Canadian social contract.

Bernier, and only Bernier, wants to end funding for multiculturalism. Again, this is almost a no-brainer. A Canadian government should be supporting Canadian culture, not Icelandic or Somali or Vietnamese culture. A nation is a shared culture, by definition. Promoting cultural differences is promoting factionalism, tribalism, and mutual distrust, in opposition to the nation and its common interests. Nazism was multiculturalism: it believed there was an Aryan science, and a Jewish science. And was not keen on letting them mix.

On top of building a society of peace, order, and good government, the entire process of civilization is a process of mixing and merging cultures: one selects the best options available from all sources. The idea of artificially nurturing cultural differences is accordingly a deliberate descent into barbarism. It is to do the work of Babel.

I am not spontaneously enthusiastic about Bernier’s desire to lower levels of immigration. I agree with the argument that we need more immigrants for economic reasons: people are the prime economic resource, as well as being an end in themselves. Canada, moreover, is objectively underpopulated. As a Christian and a liberal, I endorse the view that people have an inherent, God-given right to freedom of movement. And the process of civilization should accelerate with the closer contact of cultures: it is the reason we once held World’s Fairs.

However, there can still be such a thing as too high a level of immigration. We are dangerously ignorant of the problem of culture shock. Immigrants to a very unfamiliar culture are likely to go more than a little mad and assume that here, anything goes. They can be hostile to the resident population. It can even take a few generations for this to settle down. For most of last century, the face of crime in America was Italian. Before that, the Irish went through a similar spell of “gangs of New York” and Tammany Hall corruption. Less well known, but there were also ethnically Polish criminal gangs, and ethnically Jewish criminal organizations, like Detroit’s “Purple gang,” and so forth. If some groups have been less of a problem, this can be accounted for pretty consistently by relative lack of initial cultural difference, smaller numbers, and greater initial dispersion.

We are currently striving for maximum initial cultural difference, maximum numbers, and everyone is settling in Toronto and Vancouver.

If the body of immigrants is too large, too distinct, too concentrated in urban centres, and going through culture shock, we have a big, expensive, and dangerous problem. People can get killed, towers may be toppled, and the system can be subverted.

Given this, Bernier’s limits on immigration, while favouring immigration that makes the most sense in economic terms, seem right.

Bernier wants to abolish the Indian Act. This is again almost self-evidently good. The Indian Act was passed as a transitory measure. It enshrines the improper notion that there are two classes of Canadians, with different rights and privileges. It obviously violates the fundamental moral principle of human equality. It had to be given a special exemption from the Charter of Rights. Indian leaders ever since have blamed almost everything on the Indian Act, and declared it paternalistic and racist. This seems to be one thing we can actually all agree on. Indians governed by the Act are demonstrably, objectively, doing worse than other Canadians.

Bernier notes that any existing treaties must be respected.

How could anyone object?

Bernier’s views overall mesh notably better with those of Donald Trump’s administration in the US than those of any other candidate. Adolescent anti-Americanism aside, it is obviously in Canada’s extreme interest to be on good terms with America’s government. The US is our largest trading partner, and we depend more on trade than any other developed country. We could never defend this vast land mass, either, without the American guarantee. Anyone else would have long ago swallowed us up. We ought in good faith as well as in our interests to always seek common ground.

We are still in the middle of an election campaign. Calculations may change. But for now, it seems important to vote PPC and Bernier.

Bernier Comes Out Against Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism: Canada as a human zoo.

Max Bernier’s People’s Party has declared its intention to abolish the Multiculturalism Act. 

Barring unforeseen circumstances, that clinches it for me. If I can get on the rolls, I vote PPC. Multiculturalism is poisonous. I want Canadian culture. If I want Maltese culture, there is always Malta. Why should Canada be the only nation not allowed a culture? Add this to Bernier’s brave stand against the milk and egg cartels; he is owed my support. And, I think, yours too.

Sure, I worry about splitting the anti-Trudeau vote. But Scheer is not a leader. If he were elected, present policies would apparently barely change. They would only be managed more competently. I'm not even sure that's to our advantage, given the policies.

I am astounded that Bernier has not taken off in the polls. But that may be because most people do not pay much attention to such things between elections. He might catch fire in the campaign.

Tulsi Gabbard is a similar case to the south of us. Surely the only reason she has not taken off, after two historically good debate performances, is that nobody is paying much attention yet.

Or else a lot of people still take their lead from whatever they hear or read in the mainstream media.

Did Bernier Just Make a Breakthrough in the West?

Preston Manning.

Preston Manning has an interesting op ed in the Globe and Mail on Maxime Bernier's proposed new party. Manning speaks as the reigning expert—he was the founder of the last big disruptive new party, Reform. 

Everyone is taking Reform as the model for what may happen with Bernier. Manning argues that the Reform Party was a very different beast from what Bernier is about. For one thing, it was a grassroots movement, not a split of an existing party. Manning suggests the better parallels are Real Caouette's Creditistes in the Sixties and Maxime Raymond's Bloc Populaire Canadien back in 1944.

And behind that is a more interesting point: that Bernier may, like them, take more votes away from the Liberals than the Conservatives.

The Conservatives tend to win more seats outside Quebec, Manning argues, and the Liberals win when they can get a strong Quebec caucus. If Bernier's support remains regional, he represents a more attractive local alternative for Quebecers than the national Conservatives to voting Liberal. And regional parties can survive and thrive in Quebec.

Manning does not say so, but he might then also be available to form a formal or informal coalition with the Conservatives, forcing his issues to the forefront. Well played, then.

The problem becomes greater for the Conservatives than the Liberals if and only if Bernier attracts significant support outside Quebec.

But now we come to the elephant in the smoke-filled room, to scramble our metaphors a bit. It is striking that Manning does not mention the most obvious and most recent parallel to Bernier: the Bloc Quebecois. Like Bernier, they were a split from the Conservatives, led by a cabinet minister. And they are a far more recent example than the Creditistes and the BPQ. Why does he not mention them?

Presumably because they hurt the Conservatives more than the Liberals.

In other words, the real message of Manning's column is this: Manning likes Bernier and his plan for a new party. He is trying to give reasons for people who are like-minded to support Bernier.

Bernier may have found just what he needed to really be disruptive: a prominent Western supporter.

Max's Chances

The big guns have quickly lined up behind Andrew Scheer and ranged against Maxime Bernier: Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, Michelle Rempel.

The commentators too are all saying Bernier doesn't have a point. Andrew Coyne says there is no pressing issue here to unite people behind some new alternative.

My gut says they are wrong. In the comments on the Internet I see a lot of people saying they are fed up with Scheer's nice guy approach and want to back Bernier. I think this is plausible: it is like what happened with Trump in the US. The elites were whistling with their hands in their pockets, sure there was nothing going on and they were in full control, but they were not listening to the folks. Who were really fed up with just this attitude. I think there is a good chance Bernier can tap in to something similar in Canada.

No pressing issue? Isn't NAFTA and its consequences for the Canadian economy important? If it does not look so now, imagine how things may look after a few months or years of a trade war with the US. And immigration and integration? That was a key issue for Reform thirty years ago. Since then, the annual flow of immigration has never abated; it has grown by about 50%. If it was a popular concern then, it is a bigger popular concern now. As it has proven to be in the US and Europe.

It is predictable that Harper, Kenney, or Rempel would rush to back Scheer. The best hope for the Conservatives and the right in general is that this Bernier initiative goes nowhere; they are doing what they can to make that happen.

The big question is whether Bernier can find funding. And some prominent Western backer.

Beyond Thunderdome

Maxime Bernier.

Mad Max has hit the highway. 

Can't say I blame him. The Trump trade dispute has brought his signature issue, supply management, to the fore, and his party was taking the stand opposed to his own. What is he supposed to do, and preserve his integrity?

This is great news for Justin Trudeau. A divided right could preserve him in power indefinitely, as it did Jean Chretien.

This is a disaster for Andrew Scheer. Rumours are that he got the leadership through the support of the milk and egg cartels, who were desperate to stop Bernier. And he was not prepared to do a Peter McKay and double-cross them. But for the sake of this understandable refusal to betray his original supporters, he threw away a perfect issue for the Conservatives in supply management, and caused a split in the party. I think he also served the voters and the interests of Canada poorly, by avoiding a vital debate and leaving them no choice.

My guess is that if Bernier has enough time to organize before the next election, he should crush Scheer. Quebec is tribal; anyone with right-wing sensibilities, outside the milk producers themselves, are going to vote for Bernier, not Scheer. And the right is resurgent in Quebec, with fears over immigration and with the rise of the Coalition Avenir Quebec. At the same time, Bernier will appeal to the strong libertarian streak in the West. On paper, he could combine the support of both the old Reform Party and the old Bloc Quebecois.

It seems to me there is also a decent chance that Doug Ford, newly elected in Ontario, will throw his support behind Bernier rather than Scheer. It would be awkward for him not to; Bernier is his ideological counterpart, and similar in tone.

Bernier could end up leading the official opposition, and Scheer could turn into another Joe Clark heading up a Red Tory rump, but in less time.

If I were a backroom type within the Conservative Party, you know what I'd be pushing for? A deal to get Bernier to dissolve his new party in return for Scheer resigning, Stephen Harper stepping back in as interim leader, to lead the party into the next election, with the promise that he would step down for another leadership race within a set period after that, and with a commitment that the party would henceforth oppose supply management.

Tom and Max

So Tom Mulcair is out, and it was not close.

By conventional political calculations, this seems like a big mistake. Someone might rise to the occasion, but the NDP has nobody waiting in the wings who looks as good. Mulcair also had only one election campaign; he deserved another chance.

But I don't think the NDP is really that interested in electoral success. Given the party's history, party activists are not there for a chance at power or sinecure. It is more like a club, to which people belong for the sense of belonging. One could also say it was for the sake of their political principles, but then, flaunting those principles is a matter of signalling morality, rather than actually getting anything done. Otherwise, they would be more concerned with getting elected.

Mulcair was never really a full member of this club. He rose through the Quebec Liberal Party. He did not know these people personally. They might have felt more loyalty to a losing leader who was one of them. But if Mulcair could not deliver power, and easily, there was no further excuse for him. It did not help that he tried last election to push them to the centre, allowing them to be outflanked on the left by the Liberals. This had to alienate the majority of party activists who were there for the sake of self-identity.

In the meantime, they watched the British Labour Party veer left by electing Jeremy Corbin, while Bernie Sanders was grabbing headlines in the US. They probably felt sidelined, out of the game they came to play.

So not only are they in the mood to dump Mulcair; they are in the mood to get some of their self-esteem back by embracing the Leap Manifesto.

I guess this also means they endorse assisted suicide, at least by example?

The next leader, whoever it is, will probably lead them back into distant third-party status. But this is where they feel most at home.

Turning now to the Conservative race: pundits generally seem to be consigning Maxime Bernier to also-ran status. I think this is wrong. I think he has the best shot of all the likely candidates.

First, to hold on to its bona fides as a national party, the party should not select someone else from Alberta. Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, and Preston Manning, in effect their last three leaders, were all from Wild Rose Country. That is a serious handicap for otherwise popular figures like Jason Kenney. Brad Wall, from neighbouring Saskatchewan, is not that much better off on this score.

Second, it looks as though Bernier will be the only Quebec candidate. He will surely be the most prominent. Quebec is a huge block of delegates, the second-biggest, and, unsurprisingly given the language differences, they tend to back a native son. Doing well in Quebec in the next election also matters to a lot of party functionaries elsewhere, who are in the business of trying to win political office. Many of them will support someone they feel could go toe to toe with Trudeau in a French-language debate.

Third, in early polling, the most popular candidates for the post are Red Tories, from the old PCs: Peter McKay, Tony Clement, Kevin O'Leary. Most party activists are probably Blue Tories. Maxime Bernier, a libertarian, has a good chance of becoming their standard bearer, and they might quickly rally to his side if it looks otherwise like a win by Peter McKay. In the meantime, the Red Tory vote may be split among several prominent candidates.

Then again, I cold be wrong. I never would have predicted Donald Trump.