Why Bernier Lost

 

Maxime Bernier did surprisingly poorly in the recent byelection in Portage-Lisgar. I, for one, thought he had a good issue with abortion. He should, in theory, have been able to shear off much of the Conservative base in a strongly conservative riding. But he actually did less well than the relatively anonymous PPC candidate who ran last time.

On reflection, I think this Illustrates that the real issue in the minds of voters is not this or that current controversy, but the question of sincerity. It may have been too apparent to the voters that Bernier’s new opposition to abortion was a political ploy, not an expression of his convictions. He had previously supported abortion. He was obviously running in Portage-Lisgar out of opportunism, not some love of the neighbourhood. And it must be said, in general, Bernier does not radiate sincerity. He does not come across as dishonest, but as unspontaneous.

Poilievre, by contrast, generally sounds like he believes what he says. This distinguishes him from his predecessors, O’Toole and Scheer. O’Toole was obviously dishonest. His positions were obviously chosen for political effect, not out of any conviction, betraying those who supported him as a “True Blue Tory.” And Scheer gave the same impression by colluding in the backrooms with the milk lobby to take down Bernier, and by trying to fudge his position on abortion when challenged.

This explains why Poilievre is not threatened on the right by Bernier the way O’Toole was, yet is also doing better on the left than O’Toole or Scheer, despite their attempts to pander in that direction. Because the people who will vote against Trudeau want, above all, sincerity, not this or that political promise.

In the US, this was Trump’s strength. He is not particularly right-wing, but the right wing would die for him. People love him because he seems to say just what he thinks. 

RFK Jr. has the same aura about him.

Some people, it is still and always true, prefer being lied to. They are terrified by anyone who seems to speak truth. This is the cause of Trump Derangement Syndrome. These people will want a Biden, because he is predictable and capable of lying soothingly with a straight face. These people will like Trudeau because, with his dramatic training, he will smile and speak of “sunny ways” and make anything sound superficially plausible.

Which group is larger? The good people who want truth, or the bad people who want the comforting lies? The last US election suggests it is about 50/50. I suspect it is 1/3 for either side, and 1/3 in the middle trying to avoid taking a stand.

Bernier Raises the Scarlet Letter A

 

He said it.

Maxime Bernier has firmly grasped the third rail of Canadian politics, and is running in Portage-Lisgar on the issue of abortion.

This was predictable fallout from the US Supreme Court voiding Roe v. Wade. In fact, I predicted it. Canada always looks south. If the US is debating abortion, Canada has to.

It is also a shrewd move, and puts the Conservatives in a difficult spot. Bernier is proposing a very moderate restriction, one that has public support. It will be hard for the Conservatives to oppose it without losing a possibly significant portion of their base. 

On the other hand, the Liberals have already signalled their desire to run on the issue of abortion instead of corruption, loss of freedom, or the economy. If they give any hint of supporting Bernier’s position, the Tories play into their hands.

Polls suggest the majority of Canadians favour such a restriction on abortion as Bernier proposes. So why is this a winning issue for the left, and a losing one for the right? 

The calculation is that, while most people favour restrictions, they do not feel that strongly about it. The issue is unlikely to determine their vote. On the other hand, those who want abortion, although a minority, make this their most important issue--due to a guilty conscience. So, on balance, it is a lose-lose for the right.

Except for Bernier. He has nothing to lose, sitting at 3-4 percent nationally in the polls, and everything to gain.

One can sympathize with Pierre Poilievre, now caught between a rock and a hard place. If I were he, I would say nothing unless challenged. But he will be challenged. Challenged, I would respond that the Conservative Party and a Conservative government would not introduce any bill restricting abortion. 

But would Conservatives be allowed to support a private members’ bill?

Then he should answer yes. Conservative MPs should have the right to vote with their conscience on any private members’ bills. Now let’s talk about more urgent issues.

This will lose Poilievre some support among the pro-abortion crowd.

But it is also a test of his honour and his leadership. Is he just another political hack, or does he have principles?

PPC Policy on Gender Issues

 

The weird thing is that this common sense position is currently considered "far right."

The Conservatives and the PPC

 

Not scary.

The latest poll shows the Canadian Conservatives increasing their lead. At the same time, the People’s Party of Canada is getting more attention, with the anti-Trudeau protests, and some polls show its support growing. 

This violates conventional wisdom. The fear on the right has long been that splitting the conservative vote gives the government to the Liberals forever. The Reform Party in the 1990s and 2000s split the vote with the Progressive Conservatives. While they did, the Liberals looked invulnerable. The Wildrose Party in Alberta split the vote and allowed the NDP into power.

I think this conventional wisdom may be wrong. 

The vote on the left has been split for generations, since the 1930s, currently between the Liberals and the NDP; yet the Liberals win power more often than not.

I think it matters HOW the vote is split.

The NDP actually helps the Liberals, by pulling the public debate to the left. Canadians, always wanting harmony and compromise, accordingly vote Liberal as the safe and centre, to keep the Dippers happy. For the same reason, that they always want compromise, they are eternally suspicious of the Conservatives. Aside from offending the NDPers, the Tories probably, unlike the middle-hugging Liberals, harbour some radical members with radical ideas—the frightening “hidden agenda.”

Why did the Reform Party not do the same on the left? Because the Reform Party was not ideological. The Reform Party/Alliance was not a ginger group pulling the conversation further right. It was more an expression of Western alienation. Preston Manning insisted the party was neither left not right; it was competing for the centre, nationally under the name “Alliance.” So it lacked the intent or ability to move the needle to the right. Instead, it simply split the conservative vote.

The Wildrose Party in Alberta was also not really ideologically distinct from the PCs. Rather, it existed as a right-wing alternative for those who thought the PCs were too long in power and had become arrogant and unresponsive, but could not imagine voting left-wing to oppose them. Wildrose existed to “send them a message.” It was competing for the same ideological constituency.

The PPC is more like an NDP of the right. Its platform is distinct from that of the Conservatives, and its appeal is national. Rather than splitting the vote, its existence may tend to legitimize the Conservatives in the eyes of the majority who want government from the middle: it will soak up the ideologues, making the Conservatives look less scary. At the same time, it shows that a significant body of people are upset with the current situation. The mushy middle will want to assuage their concerns. Moving the entire discourse in a conservative direction.

Look at it this way: O’Toole, Bernier; good cop, bad cop.

Are the Winds in Canada Shifting?

Seems like I scored a clear miss on my reading of the recent Canadian leaders’ debate. I thought Jagmeet Singh did not do what he needed to do. But it seems to be the consensus among the pundits that Singh was “the winner.”

Mainstream media left-wing bias? But Steve Paikin had a pollster reporting the same, based on overnight polling. It seems it was I who was blinded by ideological bias.

I agree that Singh scored for being likeable. I just did not think that mattered, because for likeability he was ideologically up against Elizabeth May, who is more so. So that, I thought, was not going to sway votes.

The pollster says it has.

Partisans of Scheer need not panic, however. This should be good news for them. Singh pulls votes from the Liberals, for the most part. A more even split between them lets the Tories take more ridings. Singh would have a lot of ground to make up before he actually challenged for power.

But buoyed by my wrong call here, let me make another.

I have a vague sense that we have come to an inflection point in the campaign, and in Canadian politics. Possibly even a watershed.

I mean the recent video of Antifa members harassing an elderly woman with a walker who was trying to attend a Bernier event in Hamilton. They blocked her way; they loudly chanted “Nazi scum! Off our streets!” 

Note that the clip featured here is from RT, Russian TV. It is getting international attention.

It may have pulled the claimed moral high ground out from under the forces of “progressivism” in the public mind. The absurdity of the charge was too apparent. It was too apparent who was the bully, and who the bullied. Mainstream media reports have tried to obscure it, but the video itself was too vivid.

Someone was then able to ID one of the Antifa members in the video, and outed the man behind the mask on YouTube. He turned out to be a recent (2015) Syrian immigrant. Who, we are then shown, has a history of rioting. 

https://www.facebook.com/rick.boswick/videos/2667612919944522/

The optics could not have been better for Bernier’s cause: a recent immigrant from Syria, of all places, declaring exclusive ownership of the streets of Canada, showing hatred towards a native-born Canadian simply exercising her democratic franchise. And a little old disabled lady, at that.

“They hate us, they are violent, they lack all humane instincts, and they plan to take over.” That’s the visual message.

His family runs a restaurant on Queen West. More bad optics, violating the popular meme of destitute Syrian refugees. Looks like they were economic migrants after all.

Said restaurant was soon identified, as it bore the suspect’s family name, and some online called for a boycott.

Within days, the family announced the restaurant’s closing. They said the hostility they were getting on social media was apparently too much.

Doxxing is immoral. The family, as opposed to the individual, may bear no blame.

On the other hand: the perp was wearing a mask. Like the masks once worn by the KKK, almost demands a public unmasking.

And was this deliberate doxxing? Or was the matter simply self-evident by the restaurant’s name?

It was the family’s decision to close the restaurant. Nobody else made them do this, and so nobody else may deserve any blame for it. Obviously, they had suffered some very bad publicity, very likely to harm their business. Welcome to the free market.

Some were calling for a boycott. Okay: the left has made boycotting businesses for the slightest of reasons standard practice. It is something right-wingers have long just had to live through.

Did they get death threats? Any prominent figure on the right has been getting death threats for years.

The message the closing of the restaurant conveyed seems to be that the left has a glass jaw.

I think some people on the right now smell blood. And some on the left are smelling their own.

Predator may suddenly be prey, and prey may now need to be reckoned with. They, these despicable “right-wingers,” may be really angry, it seems, and not inclined to just take it anymore. It’s no longer going to be just fun for the left.

It’s probably nothing, as Kate McMillan would say.

But I attended a local all-candidates rally a couple of weeks ago, I think the day after the video surfaced, and then another just last night. The same set of candidates. At the first, the other parties tried to hammer the PPC to death, with their verbal bicycle locks, for their stand on immigration and on climate change. I noted pushback from some in the audience then. I thought I detected surprise in the candidates. Their expected applause lines were suddenly drawing flak. They seemed to pull back for the rest of the night.

Politicians are always brave at attacking nonexistent or absent enemies. But they are not going to oppose anyone real to their face. They might have a vote.

Last night, nobody took a jab at the PPC. The unkindest cut was just the Liberal saying he had no idea how they planned to finance their promises. That seemed a backhanded compliment. It was as if suddenly they were understood as an otherwise appealing electoral option.

Aside from the Liberal, none of the other candidates, all further to the left, even referred to the PPC or their stands on the issues. It was as though they were afraid to test those waters; afraid that if they made their disagreement plain, it might lose them support.

Meantime, Andrew Scheer just announced a new tougher stand on turning away refugees at the border. His pollsters may have told him something. Until now, he has been triangulating to the left.

It is all unrepresentative, anecdotal, and mostly just my sense of smell. Which has recently been proven unreliable.

Make of it what you will.

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's In; The Games Begin

I am joyful to hear that the Independent Leaders’ Debate Commission has agreed to let Maxime Bernier into its two debates. The ones that Justin Trudeau, too, has agreed to. Now we get to hear all sides.

To be sure, the big winner here is in theory Justin Trudeau, as it splits his opposition on the right. But that is not a legitimate consideration.

The important thing is that Bernier represents a distinct point of view which would otherwise have been excluded from consideration. That is profoundly bad for democracy. Objectively, I believe his People’s Party did meet the criteria set: candidates running in 90% of ridings, and at least two candidates with a legitimate shot at winning. If this can even be judged this far out.

To be honest, I personally agree with his views. But aside from that, Jagmeet Singh had actually publicly demanded that Bernier be suppressed: that he should be kept out of the debate whether he met the criteria or not, on the grounds that his views were “divisive and hateful.”

This cannot be tolerated in a democracy or a free country. Under these circumstances, excluding Bernier would have looked like endorsing this poisonous view.

Nobody has the right to decide for the general public what they should or should not think. But for the record, to any reasonable person, there is nothing either divisive or hateful in Bernier’s public positions; he came within a whisker, after all, of heading the Conservatives, Canada’s founding party. It would be profoundly sinister to ban him from the debates on these grounds.

And, not incidentally, Singh’s NDP, by contrast, regularly promotes hatred towards identifiable groups: independent businessmen, the well-off, white males, Americans, Trump supporters, and so on. In doing so, it is also deliberately divisive: its pitch is to sectarian interests as a matter of standard policy: “identity politics.”

In all fairness, Singh ought thereby to have excluded himself from the debates. His dishonesty or lack of self-awareness here is staggering.

Now that Bernier is in the debates, I think he has real breakout potential. Although this may help Trudeau, I think Trudeau is the probable winner in any case. When SNC-Lavalin broke, I was sure petite patate was finished. But God seems to have wanted otherwise, splitting the vote on his left between the NDP and the Greens. That should hand the Rouge a fistful of extra seats.

Scheer presented well at the Maclean’s debate. Yet I think his middle-of-the-road approach is ineffective in elections any more. If you dislike Trudeau’s policies, why vote for the Tories, if they offer the same policies? If you find Trudeau incompetent, why turn to someone less experienced? It is a great pity Bernier is not the Tory leader. The one angle on which Scheer can run is on the impression that Trudeau and the Liberals are corrupt. I think that is a tough sell; JT looks incompetent and panicked rather than corrupt.

In any case, for the sake of a full debate, we need to hear from Mad Max.

Blowing in the Wind

A few days ago, I wrote about the slaughter in Christchurch, and that of course everybody is going to come out and say they are against murder and hate; but they always say that, and it does nothing.

Actually, this time, in Canada, not everyone has done so. And this looks significant.

Andrew Scheer’s initial statement seemed to avoid saying that the victims were Muslim.

“Freedom has come under attack in New Zealand as peaceful worshippers are targeted in a despicable act of evil. All people must be able to practice their faith freely and without fear.”

He was quickly criticized for this omission, and sent out a second statement that was more explicit. 

Maxime Bernier

Maxime Bernier did not. He first said nothing about the incident, and then, when challenged, responded that there was no call to issue a statement. He did not automatically issue statements whenever Christians or others were attacked either.

“Some journalists have no decency. Did this one harass me or anybody else when dozens of Christians were massacred in Nigeria and the Philippines weeks ago? Why not? As a rule I don’t comment on these horrible tragedies in other countries. Period.”

Bernier has a point. Islam has been given more consideration in Canada in recent years than Christianity or Judaism. Witness House of Commons resolutions consciously and deliberately condemning “Islamophobia,” without referring to other religions—religions that suffer more actual hate crimes.

But this reaction, by Scheer and Bernier, suggests that politicians are now no longer certain they gain politically by defending Muslims. Even at a time when one might expect natural sympathy. That’s chilling. They are making a careful calculation instead; fingers are to the wind. And the direction of the wind may be shifting.

Important moral for any minority in a democracy: do not trust government to protect you from a lynch mob. The same lynch mob elected them. 

There is a reason for the blindfold.

This is one of the great overlooked advantages of Empire. The authorities in London, and those they sent out to administer, were divorced from local factions and prejudices. They could view disputes with a disinterested eye, and so would dispense justice. Good news for minorities everywhere: Sikhs in India, Ibo in Nigeria, Hakka in Malaysia, French in Canada. This is always less probable in either a democracy or a local oligarchy.

Witness the very different experience of aboriginal people in Canada, under the Empire, and in the US. Thomas Darcy McGee found the same to be true for the Irish: Montreal treated them more fairly than Boston, where the signs went up that “no Irish need apply.” Witness the disparate treatment of Africans in the two countries. 

It was real.

In theory, liberal democracies also have checks and balances built in to restrain the mob. This is the point of the Senate, in either Canada or the US. This is the point of a constitution and a separate judiciary. To some extent, this is the point of a federation.

Unfortunately, we have increasingly politicized them.

While all the talk has been, for the past forty years or, about celebrating minorities, do not be misled. Our system is not set up for this, and this was never true. It looked true only so long as so-called “minorities” constituted a majority voting bloc, and some disliked minority—such as “cisgendered Anglo straight white males”—could be falsely presented as the majority. But the focus of the mob can just as easily, and abruptly, swing to another victim: the Jews, or white women, or the Muslims, and so forth. We are beginning to see this.

First they came for the cisgendered Anglo straight white males, and I said nothing, for I was not a cisgendered Anglo straight white male. Then they came for the Jews, and I said nothing, for I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Muslims …