Will Bernier start new party?

[Argus]

9 minutes ago, betsy said:

I can't remember why we didn't vote for Bernier at the leadership race.  Is he for the carbon trade?  

His halting English? He makes Harper seem charismatic?

[Argus]

1 hour ago, capricorn said:

True, just as Scheer's French is hard to understand.

Yes, but the Tory heartland is not Quebec. Basically, anything they get there is cream. The Tory heartland is western Canada and Ontario, so it makes sense if you're going to have a leader with halting language skills, it be halting FRENCH language skills, not ENGLISH.

[Machjo]

I vote candidate, not party. That said, if I were in Bernier's riding, I could see myself supporting him depending on who ran against him.

I support open borders, and Bernier is is a mixed bag on that front. On the one hand, he's very pro-free-trade, maybe even in favour of unilateral global free trade. If so, then that would be a big plus.

He believes in more controls on immigration. I'm a mixed bag on that front. I could see putting an end to social assistance for foreign nationals except genuine refugees, but other than that I'm very much for the free movement of labour.

As for cultural policy, I say keep the government out of that.

So overall, I take him as a mixed bag: I could vote for him, but it would really depend who was running against him.

[Machjo]

2 minutes ago, Argus said:

Yes, but the Tory heartland is not Quebec. Basically, anything they get there is cream. The Tory heartland is western Canada and Ontario, so it makes sense if you're going to have a leader with halting language skills, it be halting FRENCH language skills, not ENGLISH.

But are Canadian westerners just Anglo supporters or real principled conservatives who can look past an accent?

[Argus]

Just now, Machjo said:

But are Canadian westerners just Anglo supporters or real principled conservatives who can look past an accent?

Some people will always look past accent and some will not. Don't tell me it's any different in Quebec. It's even more important in Quebec.

[Machjo]

2 minutes ago, Argus said:

Some people will always look past accent and some will not. Don't tell me it's any different in Quebec. It's even more important in Quebec.

I agree. Voters can be shallow.

[SpankyMcFarland]

14 minutes ago, Argus said:

Yes, but the Tory heartland is not Quebec. Basically, anything they get there is cream. The Tory heartland is western Canada and Ontario, so it makes sense if you're going to have a leader with halting language skills, it be halting FRENCH language skills, not ENGLISH.

Which effectively means you have to be a native English speaker. Apart from Jean Charest, very few of our politicians have been perfectly bilingual and the Anglophones usually sound awful in French. 

[SpankyMcFarland]

Bernier should have bided his time and challenged Scheer after an election defeat. He seems unaware how far from the centre of Canadian politics his ideas are. He almost sounds like Rand Paul. 

Edited August 24, 2018 by SpankyMcFarland

[-1=e^ipi]

8 hours ago, Argus said:

If we had proportional rep I would probably vote for a new party Bernier starts, but given our current election system I think the only people who would be happy about it would be the Liberals and NDP.

This is why we need proportional representation. So that we have a diversity of views represented in parliament, so that the people are better represented and so that the ideas can compete in the free market place of ideas.

[-1=e^ipi]

6 hours ago, Argus said:

Clearly he doesn't care enough to put the interest of the country ahead of his own.

Trudeau, Scheer and Singh would rather see the country burn to the ground in a giant trade war than make food cheaper for poor people. The best interest of the country is to get rid of supply management and promote free trade. None of the morally bankrupt parties in the house of commons support that!

Edited August 24, 2018 by -1=e^ipi

[betsy]

1 hour ago, Argus said:

His halting English? He makes Harper seem charismatic?

I think he said something that made us think he's a social liberal.

[Machjo]

As strange as it might seem, a principled conservative, a principled liberal, and a principled socialist will share far more in common with one another than with the unprincipled of any stripe. To take supply management as an example. A conservative would oppose it because of its conflict with the free market. A liberal would oppose it for the same reason and the fact that it hurts the poor. A socialist would oppose it because it hurts the poor. So that says a lot about the parties that defend it.

[betsy]

Speaking of Harper, he's behind Scheer.   And if I'm not mistaken too, also Ford.  

I don't know.  Like i said, I like his position on trade/supply management and immigration......I guess I'll have to follow up on Bernier to know more.

This is a major headache!

Do we really want another term for Trudeau?   I really want us to defeat Trudeau.  We can't, if we're divided.

Edited August 24, 2018 by betsy

[Machjo]

1 minute ago, betsy said:

Speaking of Harper, he's behind Scheer.   And if I'm not mistaken too, also Ford.  

I don't know.  Like i said, I like his position on trade and immigration......I guess I'll have to follow up on Bernier to know more.

It wouldn't surprise me if Harper agrees more with Bernier than with Scheer in principle but he's also a pragmatist who just wants to keep the Conservative Party together. Bernier has chosen to forego pragmatism on principle.

[bush_cheney2004]

Since the "vast majority" of Canadians are not official members of any political party, what is the relevance to Bernier's decision to them ?   It just makes the game of "strategic voting" more interesting, having no direct investment in party politics:

 

Quote

...Hilderman said she’s encouraged to hear that more Canadians might be willing to join parties. Membership has declined dramatically in recent decades. Although no clear numbers exist, estimates are that as few as 1 in 600 Canadians are members.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canadians-vow-to-join-political-parties-after-u-s-election-result-1.3155493

 

[Michael Hardner]

7 hours ago, Argus said:

1) Scheer is not Trudeau by a long shot.

2) I guarantee you the people in the PMO are high-fiving each other, laughing, clapping at every mention of his name, and popping Champaign corks at this news. So you might want to consider if you ought to be celebrating too.

1) No.  I saw him speaking today and he seems immature like Trudeau, but not as charismatic.

2) You are right.  I think this is the worst set of party leaders we have had yet.  Bernier may have picked a good time to run, if he has any chops at all, but it's a near-impossible task.

[SpankyMcFarland]

4 hours ago, scribblet said:

Why, it was oK...

Bernier made a mistaking in calling his former colleages/supporters morally corrupt.  He should've taken the high road, not the low road making a more dignified departure.

 

Corroopt as he called them. Bernier’s charm may work better on a one-to-one basis. He probably sees this as the high road of principle. There’s not nearly enough of the patient, cunning political animal in him. 

[turningrite]

6 hours ago, Argus said:

I think if the party can build on what Rempel started and make it known they understand the concerns of the 49% of Canadians who think there's too much immigration, but without going too far as to seem like they're hostile towards immigrants, they can really do a lot here. They will need to emphasis this in order to lower the attraction of Bernier's new party. They'll be able to make the case "Do you want to waste your vote on this protest party and give the country to the virtue signaling Trudeau again or stay with us and get real changes?"

Bernier's move could actually help the CPC if it actually takes note of and is willing to speak to the concerns of the large percentage of Canadian voters who are clearly uncomfortable with current immigration, refugee and multicultural policies. It would be shocking in any other democracy that all our major parties have effectively self-censored on such matters for so long. There may well be an elite consensus on these matters in Ottawa but there clearly isn't a similar public consensus, and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Whether that vacuum is filled by Bernier's group or by a more responsive CPC, Canadian voters deserve to have their concerns addressed and debated.

I don't concur with your view that immigration policy is too complicated to address, which I believe you stated in another post. What would you say about economic policy, then, which is much more complicated? It's paternalistic to hold that voters can't effectively deal with complicated issues. And immigration isn't really that complicated anyway. Bernier and/or the CPC should start by addressing its many costs as we're generally, and often not honestly, fed a diet of propaganda extolling its assumed virtues without being provided much if any evidence to justify the optimism. Australia, which largely copied Canada's system a few decades ago, fairly recently examined the failings of its immigration policies, concluding among other things that the "demographic" argument that's often mindlessly recited to justify high immigration levels doesn't actually stand up to objective scrutiny. We don't need to reinvent the wheel to understand the faults in our system. We just need politicians who are willing to be open and forthright. If nobody else is willing to break away from the ridiculous Ottawa consensus, then I'm with Bernier all the way.

Edited August 24, 2018 by turningrite

[betsy]

I don't want to see us divided. 

In the end, we have to seriously consider what will be best for the party, otherwise we'll be having a succession of Liberal government in our future.

 

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by betsy

[betsy]

7 hours ago, turningrite said:

Bernier's move could actually help the CPC if it actually takes note of and is willing to speak to the concerns of the large percentage of Canadian voters who are clearly uncomfortable with current immigration, refugee and multicultural policies. It would be shocking in any other democracy that all our major parties have effectively self-censored on such matters for so long. There may well be an elite consensus on these matters in Ottawa but there clearly isn't a similar public consensus, and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Whether that vacuum is filled by Bernier's group or by a more responsive CPC, Canadian voters deserve to have their concerns addressed and debated.

I don't concur with your view that immigration policy is too complicated to address, which I believe you stated in another post. What would you say about economic policy, then, which is much more complicated? It's paternalistic to hold that voters can't effectively deal with complicated issues. And immigration isn't really that complicated anyway. Bernier and/or the CPC should start by addressing its many costs as we're generally, and often not honestly, fed a diet of propaganda extolling its assumed virtues without being provided much if any evidence to justify the optimism. Australia, which largely copied Canada's system a few decades ago, fairly recently examined the failings of its immigration policies, concluding among other things that the "demographic" argument that's often mindlessly recited to justify high immigration levels doesn't actually stand up to objective scrutiny. We don't need to reinvent the wheel to understand the faults in our system. We just need politicians who are willing to be open and forthright. If nobody else is willing to break away from the ridiculous Ottawa consensus, then I'm with Bernier all the way.

The CPC are supposed to be touting out their way of dealing with immigration. 

 

Quote

 

The planks of the Conservative's principles are to encourage immigrants to become self-sufficient, to prioritize the most vulnerable when it comes to humanitarian immigration, and to match the skills of economic migrants with industries that need workers in Canada.

Rempel said the Conservative Party will tour the country over the next year to help shape its policies, including closing the loophole on the Safe Third Country Agreement.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-party-immigration-1.4794296

 

Hopefully, they'll listen indeed. 

We've seen how NDP Horwath had "listened" to the people - by planning more spending (when majority of Canadians don't want that).

Edited August 24, 2018 by betsy

[capricorn]

12 hours ago, scribblet said:

Bernier made a mistaking in calling his former colleages/supporters morally corrupt.  He should've taken the high road, not the low road making a more dignified departure.

 

That was a huge gaffe which will come back to haunt him.

[turningrite]

1 hour ago, capricorn said:

That was a huge gaffe which will come back to haunt him.

My take on the "morally corrupt" comment is that it likely reflects Bernier's frustration with the CPC's tendency to practice the same kind of identity and interest group politics the other two mainstream parties do. The biggest clue to this is his criticism that if Scheer becomes PM we'll just get a slightly improved version of the current government, or Trudeau-lite, as some might have it. Bernier obviously believes we need to do politics differently and that a majority or populist view needs to be applied to policy development. I think a lot of Canadians likely agree with him. At least a couple delegates indicated yesterday they were receptive to Bernier's message when being interviewed on news coverage of the CPC's Halifax convention. I suspect that sentiment is even more widely shared among grassroots Conservative supporters. As Toronto Star columnist Tim Harper noted in his column today, Bernier's appeal shouldn't be underestimated. Personally, I think that if he's serious about promoting a populist agenda, Bernier may well have the field to himself. If populist sentiment appeals to, say, 35 to 40 percent of eligible voters and the other three parties are competing for the remaining 60 to 65 percent, Bernier might truly shake up Canadian politics.

[turningrite]

2 hours ago, betsy said:

The CPC are supposed to be touting out their way of dealing with immigration. 

Hopefully, they'll listen indeed. 

We've seen how NDP Horwath had "listened" to the people - by planning more spending (when majority of Canadians don't want that).

 

I'm skeptical of the kind of consultation usually conducted by mainstream parties. As you might recall, Trudeau's government went through such an exercise when first elected mainly to justify a policy approach on immigration that it had long intended to follow. The Lib consultation was risible. I gave up on it after having to endure the introductory propaganda and I believe that relatively few people actually participated. Trends in recent polling on the kinds of concerns Bernier has raised seem pretty clear. Many Canadians feel we can't economically and/or socially adequately absorb the sheer volume of immigrants/migrants now coming into the country. Many voters are concerned about the deterioration in the quality of life, particularly in big cities where transit and health care infrastructure as well as the availability of reasonably affordable housing simply haven't kept pace with the rapid and constant influx of newcomers. Were the newcomers being spread evenly across the country, perhaps these concerns wouldn't be as acute, but that's not happening. Successive governments have botched immigration policy by not considering and responding to its broader impacts. I think a lot of Canadians believe, in effect, that we need breathing room to catch up to this. It's not rocket science.

Edited August 24, 2018 by turningrite

[scribblet]

Doctors are calling for a lot more health care funding but this article blames it all on seniors failing to mention the huge costs involved with sponsoring elderly parents whose numbers are set to increase substantially.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senior-health-care-federal-1.4749684

[Queenmandy85]

My take on Bernier is that his feelings were hurt that the party did not elect him, so he decided to blow it up on his way out the door. He ignores the fact that Sheer won. What does that make Max? A LOSER. Now he will appeal to his base and share the electoral wilderness with the NDP and all the other Losers.  He is not just a loser, he is stupid. He left secret cabinet documents in the house of a Hells Angel's girlfriend. He ignores the science of climate change. His idea of fighting the trade war imposed on us by Trump is to whimper, "we surrender." As James Moore pointed out, Max would give away supply management and get nothing in return.

Elections are won by winning the centre, red tories and blue liberals. Parties which are contenders form policies based on what analysis tells them the voters want, whether it is energy, trade or immigration. Go off on some idiotic ideological tangent and you face disaster. Do what the voters want. Its what we call democracy. 

Max is an idiot. 

Edited August 24, 2018 by Queenmandy85