Juno News - September 01, 2020


Maxime Bernier on Conservative leadership and future of PPC


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17 minutes

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3,046

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229

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Summary

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Maxime Bernier joins me on the Andrew Lawton show to talk about his new role as leader of the People s Party of Canada and why he thinks Aaron O'Toole is a better choice than Stephen Harper as Conservative leader.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to the Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:10.000 Well, it's been a little over two years since Maxime Bernier left the Conservative Party of Canada
00:00:15.940 to chart his own path as leader of the People's Party of Canada.
00:00:20.520 Since that, we've had an election and also a Conservative leadership race.
00:00:25.500 And there has been no doubt, there's been no second guessing.
00:00:28.360 I think Monsieur Bernier said at a press conference after Aaron O'Toole was elected Conservative leader,
00:00:33.760 he has no regrets and he's more confident than ever that he made the right choice.
00:00:37.920 He joins me on the line now.
00:00:40.080 Maxime, good to talk to you again. Thanks very much for coming on today.
00:00:43.280 Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate it.
00:00:45.660 When you first left to form the PPC, a lot of people thought it was going to be a flash in the pan
00:00:51.380 that eventually everyone would see the error of their ways, you'd be welcomed back into the fold.
00:00:55.760 That's not happening. And it seems like, especially from your press conference last week
00:00:59.780 and other developments that have happened in the PPC and the CPC,
00:01:04.000 like you're actually moving further and further away from that idea of reuniting the parties
00:01:08.740 like they did in 2013 or 2003, rather.
00:01:12.180 First of all, I must say that, you know, I'm a real Conservative and if you look at our platform
00:01:19.780 and the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada, there's a huge difference.
00:01:25.180 So, yes, you're right.
00:01:26.520 After the leadership contest, Aaron O'Toole won.
00:01:30.420 But I'm looking at what he said and what the Conservative Party of Canada said during the last campaign.
00:01:37.700 You know, I was very disappointed and I think a lot of Conservatives will be disappointed also
00:01:43.440 because in his first speech early Monday morning, he said that his goal was to reach to Liberals voters
00:01:52.800 and NDP voters. So that party is now a central-left political party and Aaron O'Toole is a real red Tory.
00:02:01.680 The establishment wanted that. They have a red Tory as a leader, a progressive, conservative.
00:02:08.560 And I wasn't disappointed because, you know, we had a very important crisis in this country.
00:02:14.380 If you look at the Western alienation and O'Toole didn't say anything about that and he's not ready to fix the equalization formula
00:02:25.380 to be less generous and a formula that would be fair for everybody is for the Paris Accord with more taxes, more regulations.
00:02:34.200 So the goal of the Conservative right now with Aaron O'Toole is to be a central-left political party
00:02:41.320 and they want to be like the Liberals and that's why I think a lot of Conservatives would be disappointed.
00:02:48.760 Hang on though, Maxime. I've got to ask you about that. I've got to call you on that if I may
00:02:52.660 because when I hear you say that you don't like that Aaron O'Toole is trying to reach out to Liberal voters or NDP voters,
00:03:00.160 in 2018, I think it was, you had said to Mercedes Stevenson on Global, and I have the story in front of me right here,
00:03:06.280 we want to attract people from other parties also like the NDP.
00:03:11.340 So how is that any different than what you're saying is evidence of centrism or of diluting Conservative values in Aaron O'Toole?
00:03:18.140 No, I'm not saying people from other parties. I'm saying people who share our values.
00:03:22.420 We're the only party who is doing politics, that doing politics differently.
00:03:26.540 No pandering, you know, Aaron O'Toole did pender to the cartel of dairy producers to be the leader of the Conservative Party.
00:03:35.880 It's okay. That's the way to do politics. We don't do that. We're doing politics by principles.
00:03:41.840 We try to have policies that would be good for all Canadians and not focusing on special interest groups.
00:03:48.380 So, yes, I want more people to support the PPC, but I want people who come to support us because they like our ideas.
00:03:56.040 They share our ideas. That's the most important.
00:03:58.500 If they don't like what we are saying, I'm telling them stay at home or vote for another party like the Conservative or the Liberals.
00:04:06.740 So we don't do any pandering to have their votes, but the Conservatives, that is in their DNA.
00:04:14.800 They are doing that. Their goal is to be in government. But, you know, I was a Conservative.
00:04:20.180 We had a majority government in 2011. And what is the legacy of Stephen Harper?
00:04:25.340 Tell me, Andrew, what is his legacy? Nothing. He tried to reunite the right and he was successful.
00:04:32.340 But after that, because, you know, he governed like a centrist and a liberal political party, we were not able to win in 2015.
00:04:42.300 But there's no legacy. I'm not in politics to be in government just to be in government.
00:04:47.820 I'm in politics to have real debates about the important challenges that we are having in this country that other political parties like the Liberal and the Conservatives won't speak about.
00:04:58.840 You know, that's I think that's a huge difference between us and the traditional established political parties.
00:05:06.260 You know, even with, as you say, going after the centre, the Conservatives have trouble winning elections and certainly majority elections seem harder and harder to come by.
00:05:16.640 Are there enough people in the country that share the PPC's values to deliver a PPC government?
00:05:22.840 I mean, last time I know you're a new party and you've talked about how it took the Green Party 30 years to accomplish what you did in a couple of years.
00:05:29.320 But simply put, when you look at demographics, are there enough people in the country that can vote in alignment with the values that your party is standing up for?
00:05:38.320 I think so. But answering your question, you know, I'm very realistic.
00:05:44.280 I won't be prime minister after the next election.
00:05:47.520 But, you know, my goal is to be elected with a couple of our candidates.
00:05:52.040 And we can change things if we are in Ottawa, when we'll be in Ottawa.
00:05:57.380 Look at the Reform Party.
00:05:59.400 They were not in government, but they pushed the Chrétien and Martin government to balance the budget.
00:06:06.300 That was a principal official opposition.
00:06:10.200 And they were able to change the debate in our society without being in government.
00:06:14.940 And look at the Green.
00:06:16.760 They have only two members of Parliament.
00:06:20.160 But all the established political parties, like the Liberal and the Conservative, have a huge Green platform.
00:06:27.560 So we can say that they want the debate.
00:06:30.100 We need to be out there.
00:06:31.360 We need our ideas to be discussed.
00:06:33.640 And that's what I'm doing.
00:06:34.760 And, you know, when we'll be elected, when I'll be elected, we will be able to speak loudly and pushing the debates toward more freedom and a smaller government.
00:06:47.520 That's our goal at the end.
00:06:49.120 But I hope a day I'll be prime minister.
00:06:51.100 But I'm realistic that it won't be after the next election.
00:06:54.120 So you just have to speak about what you believe with passion and conviction.
00:06:58.000 And you'll have support.
00:06:59.440 Look about the best example is the cartel and supply management.
00:07:02.940 When I started to speak about that, only 5% of the population were on my side.
00:07:08.920 Now, if you do a survey, maybe 35, 45% of them will be on the side of freedom.
00:07:15.620 So that's the way to do politics, doing politics by conviction.
00:07:20.760 And O'Toole, you know, is just an opportunist politician like Trudeau and all the others.
00:07:26.380 Are there any circumstances under which you would be open to merging the PPC with the CPC?
00:07:34.420 And the reason I ask that is because, obviously, we had Derek Sloan and Leslyn Lewis in the race.
00:07:39.740 And they seem to very much want to reach out to a lot of people that left for the PPC.
00:07:44.900 That was a part of the plan that they wanted to bring forward.
00:07:47.960 Were they successful?
00:07:49.080 And while they didn't win, they did have a significant chunk of the votes and of the points.
00:07:54.200 And we hope, anyway, they're going to be included or incorporated in the party moving forward.
00:07:59.080 And I guess that's just making me think, would you ever even entertain a reunion of these parties,
00:08:04.240 similar to the 2003 merger between the PC and the Alliance?
00:08:08.060 No, no.
00:08:09.720 First of all, you know, I had 49% of the votes.
00:08:13.260 I had the support of the members of the Conservative Party at the last leadership run.
00:08:20.240 I didn't win.
00:08:21.120 And that's OK.
00:08:22.020 You know, I respect the democracy.
00:08:24.460 I didn't have the support of a lot of caucus members at that time.
00:08:27.980 I think I had only five MPs on 99 MPs that supported me as the candidate for the leadership
00:08:35.040 of the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:08:37.060 But look at the score that they had.
00:08:41.280 It's less than 49%.
00:08:42.760 With 49% of the votes, I was not able to influence the establishment of the Conservative Party at
00:08:49.100 that time.
00:08:49.920 That's why I left the party.
00:08:51.380 That was, I said, this party is just there to be in government.
00:08:54.760 And they don't have any philosophy or principles.
00:08:59.280 And they don't want to have the real debates about the challenges that we're having in this
00:09:04.600 country.
00:09:04.860 So I left.
00:09:05.840 I said the party is morally and intellectually corrupt.
00:09:09.020 And I still believe that.
00:09:10.420 So what I'm telling to Lesley and Derek, they will fight inside the party for their ideas
00:09:18.020 to be adopted.
00:09:19.580 But I doubt because O'Toole, his goal is to be in government.
00:09:23.580 And to be in government, he will need to have more support downtown Toronto, downtown Montreal,
00:09:28.120 downtown Vancouver.
00:09:28.960 And he has to be a central left political party.
00:09:34.100 And that's his goal.
00:09:35.240 So these people will be disappointed.
00:09:37.740 So my offer to them today and to their supporters is to come with us.
00:09:42.380 We won't do any compromise.
00:09:43.780 We are the real conservative principle alternative to the old establishment politicians.
00:09:52.780 When you look at your decision to leave when you did, a lot of people have put forward the
00:09:59.740 thought that if you hung around, if you stuck around and ran in the 2019 election as a conservative
00:10:05.380 MP, you would be an MP right now.
00:10:08.060 But also, you would probably be the leader of the Conservative Party right now.
00:10:12.380 Once Andrew Scheer had stepped down, you would have been a very clear frontrunner.
00:10:15.940 Do you think that's true?
00:10:18.240 No, I don't think so.
00:10:19.800 Because first of all, you know, remember, on 99 MP, I had only five MPs who supported me at that time,
00:10:27.680 including myself.
00:10:29.360 So, you know, winning the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada,
00:10:35.480 it would have been very difficult for me to put forward our ideas because I didn't have the
00:10:42.060 support of the caucus.
00:10:43.420 And look what happened to Stockwell Day when he was the leader of the Canadian Alliance.
00:10:51.140 He didn't have the support of his caucus.
00:10:53.140 So my answer to that is no.
00:10:55.480 I took the right decision at that time, and I'm very happy.
00:10:58.920 We're building something, like you said in the beginning.
00:11:01.060 It took 20 years and six elections for the Green Party to have more than 1.6% of the votes.
00:11:06.860 We are the only party that didn't have any deficit at the end of the last campaign.
00:11:12.660 We have a surplus in bank.
00:11:14.460 We are raising money.
00:11:15.640 People like our ideas.
00:11:17.380 And I will travel across the country to meet our people and rebuild the party to be ready
00:11:22.060 for the next election.
00:11:23.200 We'll have 338 candidates in every riding at the next election.
00:11:28.720 So we will be there, and we will be able to elect a couple of our candidates.
00:11:34.820 And that's the way to change politics in Canada.
00:11:38.220 I tried inside the Conservative Party of Canada for a long time, and I was not successful because
00:11:44.500 their philosophy is not a real conservative philosophy.
00:11:48.860 You know, they want to tell you what you want to hear without challenging the status quo.
00:11:55.740 They're afraid to start challenging the status quo.
00:11:58.540 So that's not my way of doing politics, and I think we have a great future.
00:12:03.720 But we have to be patient.
00:12:05.280 Yes, I won't be prime minister after the next election, but I hope I'll be prime minister a day.
00:12:10.480 One of the things that I've noticed about the work that you've been doing after the election,
00:12:15.980 you've launched the Max Bernier Show.
00:12:18.240 I know the PPC is starting Campus Club.
00:12:20.360 So doing a lot of things to really shift the cultural discussion out in the real world,
00:12:25.420 not necessarily in the political process.
00:12:28.060 And I'm wondering if you think that is almost more important right now,
00:12:31.360 to start selling these values in the media, in alternative media, out in the world,
00:12:36.360 and then hope that downstream of that, people will start to vote along with those values.
00:12:42.860 Absolutely, Andrew, you're right.
00:12:44.800 What we will say at the next election, we'll ask people to vote for what they believe in,
00:12:50.600 not to vote against something, to vote for their values.
00:12:53.880 And that's why we need to be out there.
00:12:56.040 That's why, you know, I wanted to start the tour across the country in February.
00:13:00.780 But because of COVID-19, I was not able to do that.
00:13:04.140 And I will start that this fall.
00:13:05.660 But we use social media.
00:13:07.980 I'm very pleased that I have this opportunity to do an interview with you.
00:13:11.520 I did a press conference in Ottawa Monday.
00:13:14.360 I think it was well covered by the traditional mainstream media.
00:13:18.540 And I need to travel across the country and in the campuses also, you're right,
00:13:23.040 to speak about freedom, to speak about, you know, in this society,
00:13:26.860 you need to debate ideas.
00:13:28.460 And we don't debate ideas anymore.
00:13:30.160 And so we have to start and I'll start doing that again with the young people in university campuses
00:13:39.900 and before Chamber of Commerce.
00:13:42.800 I will do some speeches in from Chamber of Commerce across the country.
00:13:48.080 So that's the goal.
00:13:49.180 We need to be our biggest challenge, Andrew, is about maybe 80% of the population don't know that we exist.
00:13:56.480 When they know that we exist and they're listening to our ideas, you know, we are fighting for the Western civilization values.
00:14:03.620 We are fighting for fewer immigrants. 1.00
00:14:05.840 We are fighting for keeping our identity.
00:14:08.920 We are fighting for putting Canada first.
00:14:11.140 And all that, it is not a slogan.
00:14:14.620 It is not a buzzword.
00:14:16.040 It is our reality.
00:14:17.380 I ask people to go and see on our platform at People's Party of Canada.ca.
00:14:21.780 They'll be able to read that.
00:14:23.480 We're the only party who said we need to have a moratorium on immigration right now
00:14:27.260 because the official unemployment rate is about 13%.
00:14:31.320 But you and I know that the real unemployment rate, it must be about 18%.
00:14:36.140 So it's not time to have 350,000 newcomers every year when you have an unemployment rate so high like that.
00:14:44.760 We are asking for a moratorium.
00:14:46.680 What was the position on the Eran Uthul on that?
00:14:49.720 The statu quo.
00:14:50.920 The statu quo on immigration.
00:14:52.640 The statu quo on the equalization formula.
00:14:56.840 The statu quo on pipelines.
00:14:58.700 He doesn't want to use the Constitution to impose.
00:15:01.760 And I'm using the word impose to impose pipelines on provinces that don't want a pipeline.
00:15:08.800 That's important.
00:15:09.760 It's under the federal jurisdiction.
00:15:11.900 He's not talking about that.
00:15:13.780 With Eran Uthul, it would be the same thing like Andrew Scheer with a new face.
00:15:18.620 And they won't have the courage to speak about that.
00:15:21.380 And the Western alienation will be worse than it is right now.
00:15:25.240 So I think we have a great future.
00:15:27.640 And, you know, I'm looking forward for that.
00:15:30.160 But going into the 2019 election, you had momentum.
00:15:34.420 The party was new.
00:15:35.420 No one knew what it was going to become.
00:15:37.380 You had just been a sitting member of parliament.
00:15:40.180 Going into the next election, whenever it is, how do you build on what you did in 2019 and not just kind of dissipate, basically?
00:15:49.000 Because that was when you had the momentum.
00:15:50.700 And that was when a lot of people were really interested in wondering what the first result was going to be.
00:15:56.380 How do you build going forward?
00:15:57.940 But, you know, we must admit that the result, my personal result of the election, I wasn't elected with 28% of the votes.
00:16:06.900 I was disappointed.
00:16:08.140 And a lot of our supporters also.
00:16:10.360 But, you know, it's part of the political life.
00:16:13.440 We need to build from there.
00:16:14.860 And I think we have a strong base right now.
00:16:17.020 Now we are about 4% in the poll.
00:16:19.840 And the Green Party is at 6%.
00:16:21.820 So we just need to be out there and speak about what we believe.
00:16:25.460 So I'm looking for the next election.
00:16:28.420 I'm very optimistic.
00:16:33.120 I think we are able to raise money.
00:16:35.220 That's the name of the game.
00:16:37.640 If you don't have any money, you won't be able to do advertising and to travel across the country.
00:16:42.720 So that's very encouraging that our people are still donated to us.
00:16:47.480 And they're very generous.
00:16:48.640 So that being said, the same momentum right now, you know, it's not there.
00:16:54.420 People are preoccupated with their jobs.
00:16:57.020 I think that's the most important.
00:16:58.920 But early before the election, and I think in a couple of months, people will look at politics a little bit closer, right?
00:17:07.040 And that will help us.
00:17:08.780 That's why, you know, our challenge is to be out there, speak to social media and traditional media.
00:17:14.580 That's why I started the Max Bernier Show on the YouTube channel.
00:17:19.040 It's a YouTube People's Party of Canada slash official YouTube channel.
00:17:23.660 I'm doing some interviews, but also I'm doing, I'm very active and speaking about what is important for this country.
00:17:33.220 And so it's a nice time for us.
00:17:35.940 We just have to build from there and we'll see what will happen.
00:17:39.640 Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada.
00:17:42.260 Good to talk to you again, Maxime.
00:17:43.420 Thanks very much.
00:17:44.580 Thank you, Andrew.
00:17:45.420 Have a nice day.
00:17:46.120 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:17:48.240 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.