Juno News - September 23, 2022What does Poilievre’s win mean for the PPC？ (ft. Maxime Bernier)
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Summary
Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada, joins the Andrew Lawton Show to discuss his party's new leader, Pierre Polyev, and his vision for the future of the party and Canada.
Transcript
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We covered a little over a week ago the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership results in which
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Pierre Polyev very handily won the leadership party of Canada on the first ballot and what
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we see now is I think a big question about the place that the Conservative Party of Canada
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has in Canadian politics and what that means for the broader Conservative movement and
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So I wanted to bring in Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada and a good
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I was just talking earlier about this poll that came out from Nanos today showing the
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But what do you think is the strength or health right now of the PPC?
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Well, it's a big difference between us and the Conservative Party of Canada.
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I believe that, you know, there's a lot of difference between us and the Conservative.
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That new leader, Pierre Polyev, is more popular than Andrew Scheer or the other leaders that
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And I believe that Pierre Polyev is more intelligent than O'Toole and is a better communicator.
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So I think that's a good news for the Conservative Party of Canada.
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But also the big difference between us and the Conservative is the way that we are doing
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As you know, we are doing politics based on ideas and conviction.
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And, you know, it's not because something is not popular or politically correct that we
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We will speak about the values that we believe are very important for the future of this country.
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And the Conservative and Polyev are doing politics based on survey and polling.
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And Polyev was very popular during the last leadership contest because he spoke like a
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And he said, I'm the true blue and Polyev, you know, you need that actually to speak like
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And I believe that they will do some compromise with their ideas.
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But also he's not speaking about something that is very important for Western Canadians and
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They are fed up with the federal government that is not respecting the Constitution and,
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you know, doesn't do anything to build pipelines.
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And also Polyev didn't speak about the equalization formula.
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So we have a lot of policies that are very different than the Conservative.
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And we'll see what will happen in the near future.
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I heard anecdotally from a lot of people in the last two federal elections,
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but certainly the last federal election when the PPC did very well, almost tripled its vote share over 2019.
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And I heard people say things like, well, I'm going to vote PPC.
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But if someone like Pierre Polyev or Leslyn Lewis were the leader of the Conservatives,
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if someone like Pierre Polyev or Leslyn were there, I would vote Conservative.
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And a lot of people, for example, that were supporters of the convoy and supporters of the PPC
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have now a choice between two politicians who were there and speaking about mandates.
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So how do you recapture or hold on to some of those people that voted PPC
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that were actually not supporters of the Conservatives last time, but might be this time?
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Actually, we did that in the past from 0% in 2018, 1.6% in 2019, 5% at the last election.
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And I don't know what would be the issue for the next election.
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And I believe that we won't be in election in this fall.
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That being said, if it's the immigration, we are the only party that is speaking for
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saying no to mass immigration, for sustainable immigration.
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Polyev and Trudeau and Jack Mead are on the same wagon on that.
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But we have strong policy, and that can be the future of our country.
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As you know, right now in Alberta, there is an independence party in Alberta.
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And we are the only national party that is addressing that, saying we need to have a radical
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So I don't know what will be the main issue at the next election, but we will be there.
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We have the same platform, and that will be the same one.
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And I don't know what will be the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada, because
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like I said before, they will do polling and focus group before the election.
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And after that, they will do some compromise, try to have more votes in Ontario and Quebec.
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As you know, there's more seat in the GDA than in all Alberta.
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But for us, people understand we are doing politics differently.
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We will always be the same and always fight for what we believe, for a smaller government
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Ottawa that will respect provincial jurisdiction and respect our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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I know it's a question you get asked all the time, and I know it's an annoying question,
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but I think the audience also is very interested in your answer to it.
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But the idea of a merger, because we've seen the right split in the past in history when
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the Reform Party was born out of the Progressive Conservative Party, and eventually they came
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What are the circumstances that would need to happen for a PPC, Conservative Party of Canada
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merger, if something like that would ever happen under your leadership?
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I want to use the example that you just used in the past, you know, the Reform Party of
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Yes, the Reform Party of Canada did merge with the, at the end, it was a conservative, the
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Progressive Conservative Party, but in between the Canadian Alliance, as you know.
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We had 10 years, and I was part of that, of a conservative government.
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We cannot trust the Conservative Party of Canada.
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We don't, they are conservative when they are in the leadership contest, and after that,
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With O'Toole, we knew he went, he went all the way to the left.
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So it's not my responsibility to help elected Conservative candidates.
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My responsibility is to help our candidates, our PPC candidates, to be elected.
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Because what happened in the past, you know, we are the new Reform Party.
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90% of our platform, it's based on the old blue book, the Reform Party.
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So we won't do any compromise with our ideas, and we won't do the mistake that President Manning did.
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One thing that I would ask you about the PPC, and I know that you have a lot of things in your platform that touch on a number of issues,
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from Indigenous issues to ending supply management and so on.
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But last time, I mean, overwhelmingly, when I went to your rallies, and I covered you on an Alberta tour,
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and when I interviewed you, the biggest topic was vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.
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And this was an issue that no one else in Canadian politics was speaking up on.
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It was only the PPC, and I commend you for that, Maxime.
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If those issues are not live issues in the next election,
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how do you get people who might have only been introduced to the PPC because of that to stick around?
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First, adding the ending, the mandates, it's not, you know, we still have to work on that.
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Actually, tomorrow, I'll be in the court in Ottawa with Brian Pettford.
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We are fighting for our rights to freely travel across this country against the vaccine mandates
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that Trudeau imposed to us on unvaccinated Canadians.
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And it's important to do that fight in the court because we want to have a legal precedent.
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And like that, it would be impossible for any government to impose these kind of mandates on Canadians.
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Maybe in the next election, it won't be COVID-19, and I hope it won't.
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But that being said, there's a big difference with us.
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Now we are living in a climate hysteria everywhere.
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We are the only party that is saying no, and we will redraw from the Paris Accord.
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People are staying crossing our border illegally.
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We are the only party that is speaking against mass immigration for sustainable immigration,
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a maximum of 150,000 a year, with the big majority of them being skilled immigrants.
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The Conservative won't speak about that because it's not popular.
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Like, Poliev didn't speak against the mandate because it was not popular in 2020.
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Poliev is an opportunist politician, and he's speaking about things when they're popular.
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For him, the most important is not to be on the right side of the current issue.
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And that's why I said the Conservative Party is intellectually and morally corrupt.
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And that's why, and I'm very pleased right now that Poliev is speaking against the mandate.
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It's a sign that the freedom fighters, the truckers, that ourselves and all the freedom fighters across the country won the battle.
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Because, yes, we were a French minority in the beginning in 2020.
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And after two years, now we are part of the majority.
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So, for Poliev, he can speak about it, and he's doing that.
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So, I don't know what will be the issue next time, but the BBC will be there always to fight for a smaller government, Ottawa, that will respect our rights and respect the autonomy of every province.
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Just before I let you go, Maxime, I wanted to ask you about this little victory you had in Saskatchewan this week.
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Now, oftentimes, it's hard to affect change directly when you're not in Parliament.
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But you and one of your lieutenants in Western Canada, Kelly Lawrence, had posted this on Twitter, and it did very well, that the Saskatchewan Public Health Line, I think it's like 511 or 811 or something, had on its main menu, you know, press 1 if you want to speak to a nurse, press 2.
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Number 5 was if you want help with assisted death, you press 5.
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And this is the number that people were dialing if they had a mental health crisis as well.
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And in your advocacy on this, they've actually removed this now.
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It took them a couple of weeks, but the common sense has prevailed, and that's important.
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They were promoting assisted suicide, and when they're doing that actively, the provincial government was doing that actively.
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When you know that in our healthcare jurisdiction right now and healthcare system, it's not working well.
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We have wait time for surgeries and long waiting lists.
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So that being said, when you're promoting that, and the goal of that number, 811, is for you to have the medical assistance, not to have somebody that will tell you, hey, if you want to die, by the way, we can help you.
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I was very pleased that they understand, and that was a victory for us, but not only us.
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Common sense people, Canadians, that called the minister and said, hey, you must stop that.
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I voted for that legislation, Eutaneza, when I was a member of parliament, but now we need to change that legislation because it must be more restrictive.
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Now they're promoting that, and it's not only at the end of the life when it was supposed to be, when you have an extreme medical situation, and I think that we must review that legislation to have put more restrictions on the use of that option for Canadians.
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Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada.
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Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
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Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.