Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada, joins Ezra in studio to discuss his vision for the future of the party and what it means to be a true Canadian nationalist. He also discusses his opposition to the Global Flu Pandemic and why he believes Pierre Polyev is the best candidate to lead the party in the next election.
00:01:12.500And we'll always remember that you personally took a stand and were even arrested for it during the Civil Liberties bonfire of the pandemic and the lockdowns.
00:01:23.540I mean, that was, I think, really a dark stain in Canadian history for Civil Liberties.
00:01:28.360Yeah, I never thought that, you know, I'll be arrested after a political gathering in a park for Frighting for Freedoms.
00:01:34.960That was just before the last general election in 2021.
00:01:38.940And actually, you know, a leader of a political party being arrested and cuffed and put in jail for a non-crime.
00:01:46.420That's supposed to be in a democratic country all over the years.
00:01:49.860But it was not, as you know, except you and the independent media were saying, you know, how come we are doing that here in Canada?
00:01:58.500You know, I remember one moment from the last election where you were kept out of the leaders debate and all five party leaders, it was almost like they held hands together and made a pledge about the vaccine or something.
00:02:19.200Let me just remind our viewers, remember this from the last election.
00:02:51.200Pour vous protéger vous-même, pour protéger les plus fragiles d'entre nous, pour protéger l'ensemble de la population, le meilleur moyen connu demeure le vaccin.
00:07:36.420And they're using climate change, actually, to do what they did with COVID-19, spread fear.
00:07:42.060And, you know, I was watching TV, and it's very rare, CBC yesterday, and I saw an ad during my football game, I like football, about, you know, the climate crisis.
00:07:53.620They want to put in the minds of Canadians that there's a climate crisis.
00:07:58.000And Polyev is playing that playbook because he's okay with the climate change agenda.
00:08:56.540That's bad ideologies, and we need to replace that by good ideas.
00:09:00.780And our role is to push Polyev to do the right thing.
00:09:05.100So that's why, at the next election, I will tell Canadians when the time will come, you know, we are your insurance policy that Polyev will stay in the right direction.
00:09:16.400You need us because we will vote with Polyev when he will be a real conservative, and we will shame him when he won't.
00:09:40.900But our ideas will become more popular, and I believe that we'll be able to elect our first candidate at the next election, and we'll start that common sense revolution.
00:09:51.980I'll come back to your electoral prospects in a minute, but I want to touch on something you said about immigration, how every politician is afraid to talk about it.
00:10:00.840You know, the last time I interviewed Andrew Scheer, when he was the leader of the party, I asked him repeatedly about immigration, and he was so upset with my questions that he never talked to me again.
00:10:13.520And here's a quick flashback of how that went.
00:10:15.680Do you have anything to say about the Syrian migrants or about John McCallum's new numbers?
00:10:21.100Or, I mean, that's something that I think conservatives, maybe it's just me, but I think a lot of conservatives want to hear something on that.
00:10:28.840I think you're right, and I think it's more than just conservatives.
00:10:31.760I think a lot of Canadians are concerned about issues like security.
00:10:34.560And one thing we saw with the Syrian refugee issue was that it became very apparent that it was a political goal on a political time frame,
00:10:44.960and that it looked like the liberals were sacrificing things like security and proper vetting to reach that.
00:10:52.260And the feedback I got from my constituents and premiers around the country, a lot of people saying, look, we have to get this right.
00:10:57.560Yes, Canada can play a role in providing a compassionate space for people in danger, but we have to get the security component of that right.
00:11:04.680But Kelly isn't talking about security, he's talking about values.
00:11:53.380And then let's determine that number from that.
00:11:55.300I'm not going to be in the business of trying to participate in an auction of, well, you know, one party says $300,000, another party says $400,000.
00:12:03.040I'm not going to try to help, but it should be based on logical rationale.
00:12:13.160So if it's not based on something logical or coherent, then I think it's just a political target aimed at, you know, trying to win over a segment of the electorate.
00:12:25.360Well, I am against a policy that just throws a number out for shock value or to try to gain attention.
00:12:33.440I want our immigration policy to be based on what the needs of the economy are, what the needs of our society, and then let's arrive at a number.
00:13:11.020But before they even get here, should we ask them about their values?
00:13:15.580Should we ask them about Canadian values before we let them in?
00:13:18.020I think it's important that we focus on certainly looking at what type of activities people have been involved in in the past with a view towards security.
00:13:26.260I think you're right that politicians are afraid of that because if you say you're against immigration, people call you racist, even though, by the way, many new Canadians think that the immigration numbers are out of control.
00:13:38.940But just about a week or so ago, I saw Andrew Lawton from True North sit down with Pierre Polyev and press him several times on immigration.
00:13:50.900And it was the first time I had heard Polyev say he wants to link immigration numbers with housing construction and number of doctors in the country.
00:14:03.060Here, we'll play a quick clip of that.
00:14:04.860Do you accept that immigration is inflaming the housing crisis?
00:14:21.840I don't even think the liberals are now seeming to acknowledge that themselves.
00:14:25.100So my common sense plan is to link immigration numbers to home building numbers, and that is how you're going to restore housing affordability.
00:14:38.340Look, we built fewer homes last year than we built in 1972.
00:14:43.380In 50 years, we're building less homes.
00:14:45.860In 72, we had a population of 22 million people.
00:14:49.300Now we have a population of 39 million.
00:14:51.240So he's not coming out with his immigration numbers yet, and he's not saying, I'm going to cut it.
00:14:58.140But he's sort of telegraphing that, I mean, there's no way that immigration is over a million a year right now.
00:15:08.940I think Polyev is signaling that he's going to rein it in, but he's not giving numbers yet.
00:15:14.100I think that's significant that he's willing to talk about it for the first time.
00:15:17.840You see even the liberals saying, well, maybe some of these student visas are a little bit out of control.
00:15:26.560I see polling in mainstream media that suggests immigration is too high.
00:15:32.380Is it about to become socially acceptable to challenge immigration levels?
00:15:38.980I think it is more socially acceptable than it was in 2019 when I started that debate.
00:15:46.960And, you know, if you look at what Polyev said in that interview, he said also a couple of months before that he wants to tie immigration with the demand coming from big businesses.
00:19:56.480I've attended some of these pro-Hamas rallies.
00:20:02.040I'm calling them pro-Hamas rallies because many of the people there just say that they are for Hamas, even though it's a banned terrorist group in Canada.
00:20:22.000And I think it's Prime Minister Harper who put Hamas under a terrorist group when he was a prime minister.
00:20:29.340Well, I've attended a number of these pro-Hamas rallies in Canada.
00:20:34.120But I've also attended one in London, England, which was huge.
00:20:37.220And my observations, I mean, our reporters cover them all over the country, is that most of the people marching are either new immigrants who might not even be Canadian citizens yet, or they're not what used to be called old stock Canadians.
00:22:14.020And when I said that in 2019, they were saying, oh, no, we don't need that.
00:22:17.420Yes, if you don't share our Canadian values, sorry, I'm right about that, you're not welcome.
00:22:22.080So we need to have an interview with each one of them and ask the real questions if they believe that men and women are equal under the law, that there's a rule of law, and asking the real questions.
00:23:16.480In the Netherlands, they have a voting system that if you get 5% or 10% of the vote, you get 5% or 10% of the seats.
00:23:24.800And so he wound up with the largest chunk of seats, whereas in Canada, the People's Party can come in second or third in dozens of ridings, but you'll get zero seats.
00:23:42.640But I was listening to Gheert Wilders, and I thought, in Canada, we sort of have someone who's taking that populist, freedom-oriented approach.
00:23:49.920But the difference is Gheert Wilders got a quarter of the seats.
00:23:54.140And the fact is, the People's Party doesn't have one.
00:23:58.200And how are you going to overcome that?
00:27:36.580Remember, Preston Manning, every day in the House during that time, the 1980s, he was asking for a balanced budget, a balanced budget, a balanced budget.
00:27:45.440And speaking about that, that was not popular in the beginning.
00:27:48.820And Preston Manning was a principled politician.
00:28:53.320Polyev, and I hope that Polyev will have that majority, because that argument about splitting the vote, splitting the vote, people will see that Polyev majority government will be a little bit like a Harper majority government.
00:29:08.060But yeah, Polyev will look at the polls, like he's doing right now, and he will be afraid to do the vote reforms.
00:29:13.840So, and I can use another example, the Green Party of Canada, Israel.
00:29:34.040So we have a role to play, and we'll play that role.
00:29:37.380So we can win by being in the opposition, being elected, but also we can win by influencing and pushing the conservative party to the right and doing the right thing for the country.
00:29:49.680Polyev is afraid to speak about immigration right now, and he was afraid, and he's afraid to speak about against the Paris Accord.
00:29:57.600But maybe your day would change, and when you would change, that would be a victory for us.
00:30:03.660I look at your position with a political party that doesn't have seats, but you have candidates, you have organization, you're traveling, you're in Toronto here today.
00:30:12.500And I think, in some ways, I understand what you're doing, because we, too, don't have any seats, but we're always campaigning, you know, we're always putting out ideas, and because we don't get government money, we're always crowdfunding.
00:30:27.120Well, that's like a political party, always fundraising.
00:30:29.400And so I was thinking, are you really describing a kind of think tank?
00:30:37.100Because you talk about the Green Party as being an idea generator that the other parties copied.
00:30:42.080You talk about Preston Manning as being an idea generator that even Jean Chrétien copied in some ways.
00:30:48.820Is the people's, is a future for the People's Party that you are sort of the keeper of the flame of what freedom and populism and grassroots sovereignty means?
00:31:01.740Because that could pack some real punch.
00:31:04.980I don't know if the Conservative Party of Canada is trying to steal your ideas.
00:31:12.140But if you were a think tank, I don't know, I'm not telling you what to do.
00:31:16.040I'm just trying to imagine what is it like, because you don't...
00:31:24.320Because when I'm speaking about big ideas, and we don't change our platform at every election, that's a big difference.
00:31:31.640The Conservative, if you look, if you go, and I hope people will go to the Conservative Party of Canada website and try to find Pierre Polyev's electoral platform.
00:31:40.280They won't, because Polyev doesn't know what he will believe in when the election will come.
00:31:45.120He will need to do polling and focus group.
00:31:46.960We are different, and I'm saying that we are doing politics differently because our platform is always the same.
00:31:53.300What I said at the last election, I said that at the first election for us in 2019, and that will be the same.
00:32:00.140You can go on our website, People's Party of Canada, and read our platform.
00:32:03.360So what I'm telling you, we are speaking about things that may not be that popular today, but we believe that an idea is not that popular.
00:32:12.500That doesn't mean that an idea is not just and true.
00:32:15.680And an idea does not become just and true because it's popular.
00:32:19.140That idea will become popular because we will speak about it, and the more we speak about it, the more popular it is.
00:32:25.000But for the Conservatives and the Liberals and every established political parties, they will speak about something when they're going to see in the poll that maybe there's 50% of the population on that side.
00:32:35.460For us, if there are only 5%, 2%, or 3%, we don't care.
00:32:40.260We have a vision for this country, and we will push that vision and speak about it.
00:32:44.600And actually, I believe that if you look at the past, I was right.
00:32:48.000We started that party in 2018 with 0%, 2019 1.6%, and we tripled our score in 2021.
00:32:55.700And I don't know what will be the future, but we'll have a candidate in every ridings, and this party will be ready to do the fight.
00:33:01.840So we are a principal alternative, populist principal alternative, fighting for common sense ideas, and we're not afraid to speak about the truth.
00:33:12.680Yeah, I remember working, again, I'm thinking my own experience, with Preston Manning trying to build the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance.
00:33:20.320And one of the things he tried to do was recruit candidates who had some name recognition.
00:33:25.080It was very hard to do, because if you were sort of a local celebrity, like a mayor, odds are you would run with a party that had power or that promised you power.
00:34:11.760Because, again, the difference between Geert Wilders, who now has 37 MPs with him, is that he's got a team now, and he's expertise in grassroots.
00:34:23.620I'm trying to understand how you get from here to where you want to go structure-wise.
00:34:28.340Yeah, that was a little bit difficult at our first election to have candidates in every riding with a star status, a star candidate status, if I can express myself like that.
00:34:42.620But I can tell you right now, we have candidates who are lawyers, teachers, truck drivers.
00:34:53.880So we have different candidates coming from different backgrounds.
00:34:57.280But I must admit that we don't have a person that is well-known with the mainstream media right now.
00:35:02.520But actually, we have about 125 candidates selected and approved for the next election.
00:35:09.020We'll do a call for candidates early January.
00:35:11.840Our goal is to have our full slate ready before the end of next year.
00:35:16.620And I hope that we'll find our star candidates.
00:35:19.580But our people are star candidates in their communities.
00:35:22.860They're well-known in their communities.
00:38:38.060So they will wait until the end, maybe 2025, September or fall 2025.
00:38:44.200But the People's Party will be ready for 2024.
00:38:47.500And it's sad that we have to wait another maybe two years for that.
00:38:51.280I hope we can have an election as soon as possible.
00:38:54.320But yeah, we'll be there when the time when they're going to call an election will be there.
00:38:59.780I'll be at the national debates and we'll have the candidates in every riding.
00:39:03.340So every single Canadian will be able to vote in line with their values.
00:39:07.120And what's the website that people can get more information?
00:39:09.680People's Party of Candidates, and they can follow me on Twitter, Maxim Bermier, on Rumble, YouTube, and all these social media.
00:39:18.000And actually, what I'm doing, you know, I'm traveling across the country, like you said.
00:39:23.800But also, I try to be present with a lot of, you know, influencers on social media, podcasts, like a little bit Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing in the U.S.
00:39:33.820Robert F. Kennedy is canceled by the mainstream media.
00:39:37.120But he's very popular in the news with the people, sorry, because he's doing, you know, alternative media, like your media and podcasts.
00:39:45.880So that's our strategy, to be able to reach more people.