Maxime Bernier Preparing Bid For Conservative Party Leadership

[Wilf]

I like O'Leary as a media personality and a business-man. But you could sink him very easily by running non-stop ads of him parading around in his tighty-whities during an old episode of Dragons Den. I don't care who you are, that is just not a good look. Not even Teflon Don could strip down to his whities and remain viable... I think?

Also, the media could compared O'Leary background with the previous conservatives campaign and point out the hypocrisy if they chose him.

 

[Cdn_for_liberty]

Maxime still supports a gold standard

Apparently he reads Mises and Hayek.

 

[Wilf]

Maxime still supports a gold standard

Apparently he reads Mises and Hayek.

He, also likes Bastiat.

 

[Cdn_for_liberty]

Here's Maxime being interviewed at the CPC



I thought the interview was ok but didn't go into much detail like the Kevin O'Leary interview.

 

[Wilf]

Here's Maxime being interviewed at the CPC



I thought the interview was ok but didn't go into much detail like the Kevin O'Leary interview.

The interview makes him appear likeable to westerner suspicious of his Quebec background.

 

[Wilf]

Maxime Bernier has kept a relatively low profile since he resigned as foreign minister in 2008 after leaving secret documents at the home of his then-girlfriend, a woman with links to biker gangs.
The maverick Conservative MP is making waves again – this time as a candidate to be the party’s next leader. Pundits give Mr. Bernier scant chance of winning. The betting is on so-far-undeclared, but better-known aspirants such as Jason Kenney, Peter MacKay and Kevin O’Leary.
And yet Mr. Bernier is grabbing attention by slaying some sacred cows of national economic policy, including the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the supply management regime in dairy and poultry.
And he isn’t done yet. Mr. Bernier has promised to drop a new policy idea every month leading up to the 2017 Conservative Party leadership vote.
In his own way, the MP from the fiercely entrepreneurial Beauce region of Quebec is laying out a distinctly free-market platform for the party – an antidote to what the Liberals and NDP are offering. “Mad Max,” as he’s sometimes derisively called around Ottawa, is doing it by embracing provocative ideas that most other politicians won’t touch.
In a speech this week, Mr. Bernier decried the CRTC’s “control freak mindset” and said the commission should be phased out as the country’s telecom regulator. He also called for scrapping remaining foreign ownership restrictions in telecom and ending policies such as mandated sharing of fibre networks and managed wireless spectrum auctions.
“Competitive markets don’t need government intervention to work,” he said at a telecom conference in Toronto. “They only need to be free.”
Last month, he advocated the dismantling of the supply management regime, which is most fiercely defended in Quebec, the country’s dominant milk producer.
“It is a government cartel,” he said bluntly as he announced his improbable leadership run. “It is the opposite of free markets.”
It’s time to have a “real debate” within the party about this “taboo” issue, he added.
Mr. Bernier, the only current MP to disavow supply management, also took a jab at his own party for failing to live up to its free-market principles. “I think we Conservatives are not credible when we talk about principles and then defend policies that squarely contradict these principles,” he said.
The Conservatives, like the Liberals and NDP, officially support the supply management system, which tightly regulates dairy, poultry, turkey and egg production in Canada.
Mr. Bernier, a lawyer and former life insurance executive, has close ties to the Montreal Economic Institute, whose free-market philosophy is similar to that of the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. He’s often identified with libertarians, who generally believe in individual rights, limited government and free markets.
It’s not clear if this is all just an attention grab by an underdog in what is expected to be a crowded field of candidates. Or, perhaps it’s an audition for a cabinet post in a future Conservative government.
Mr. Bernier may also want to draw his party further to the right on economic policy issues.
His views on telecom and agriculture may be outside the political mainstream in Canada, but they’re far from radical relative to the rest of the developed world. Canada’s dairy and telecom policies are frequent targets of criticism from key trading partners as well as the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Conservative government’s 2008 “Compete to Win” competition policy review (sometimes called the L.R. “Red” Wilson report) similarly advocated scrapping foreign ownership barriers in various industries, including telecom.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bernier’s credibility has suffered because of some his other more outlandish suggestions, including calling for a return to the gold standard and questioning whether global warming is a man-made problem.
And yet he may be onto something in his call for a more principled economic platform.
It wouldn’t be without risk. Cows earn their sacred status because powerful and entrenched economic interests vigorously resist all change.
But if they choose to go there, Mad Max is laying out a policy road map for thrill-seeking Conservatives.

 

[Wilf]

The state of the campaign

Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier out-fundraised his rivals over the summer, raking in $371,000 between July and September, more than the rest of the field combined.

The financial reports posted on Elections Canada's website also show the Liberals raised the most money in the last quarter, while the Conservatives and New Democrats had their worst fundraising quarters in five years.

Quebec MP Maxime Bernier raised $370,605.89 from 1,838 contributors in the third quarter of 2016, out-pacing the other contestants who were officially in the running for the Conservative leadership at the time.
Kellie Leitch, who had raised the most money in the second quarter of the year, raised $215,635.97 from 811 contributors. Her total of $450,421.56 raised so far in the campaign, still puts the Ontario MP at the top of the list.
But Bernier's successful quarter has him nipping at her heels, with a total of $427,508.72 raised between April and September.
Michael Chong raised $124,224.34 from 243 contributors, bringing his total for the campaign to $208,913.72.
Fellow Ontario MP Tony Clement, who withdrew from the contest earlier this month citing his fundraising difficulties, raised just $20,080.00 from 26 contributors.
Deepak Obhrai, an Alberta MP, raised only $1,100 from two contributors.
No fundraising data was available for official leadership contestants Chris Alexander, Steven Blaney, Erin O'Toole, Andrew Scheer and Brad Trost, who either entered the race after the end of the third quarter reporting period or had no fundraising during the summer to report.
The Liberals raised the most money over the summer, taking in $3,223,064.85 from 35,180 contributors. Still, that was down about $1.7 million from the previous quarter and the lowest amount of money raised by the Liberals since the second quarter of 2014.
Fundraising was also down for the two opposition parties.
The Conservative Party raised $3,131,308.24 from 29,073 individual contributors, down about $1.9 million from the second quarter. It was their slightest fundraising haul since the third quarter of 2011, though the leadership contest may have tapped donors who would otherwise have contributed to the party coffers.
Including contributions made to the leadership contestants, the Tories brought in a total of about $3.9 million. The last time the Conservatives raised less than $4 million was in 2013.
The New Democrats saw their fundraising slide for the fourth consecutive quarter, dipping to $972,607.03 raised from 14,553 contributors. That is down just under $111,000 from the second quarter of 2016 and the NDP's worst result since the third quarter of 2011.
The Green Party raised $514,728.20 from 7,008 contributors, while the Bloc Québécois raised $99,732.58 from 874 contributors.

 

[Wilf]

Interesting...

[FONT=&quot]In Canada, at least in the political realm, it is rare to come across a paleoconservative or a libertarian. Rather than finding a political junkie sitting with a group of like-minded people at a pub discussing monetary policy, you can now find a senior politician running for the Conservative Party leadership talking about monetary policy.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]His name is Maxime Bernier.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]It is a shock. If Justin Trudeau is any indication, you’d think that Canada only has politicians promoting more government, more welfare, more debt.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]And it isn’t just a conservative revolt to Trudeau’s majority victory. Bernier has been talking about economics, monetary policy and the gold standard for a long time.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In June 2010, Bernier posted an op-ed in the National Post entitled “How the central bank eats your money.” It’s something you’d find written by someone like former Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul or a piece published on some obscure libertarian blog.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Here is what he wrote:[/FONT]

“…At a time when there were no central banks and when money was calculated as a certain quantity of gold or silver.
Deflation is not a threat to our prosperity. On the contrary, in a situation where the money supply is stable, it is the manifestation of prosperity!
Prosperity has nothing to do with the quantity of money that we have in our pockets, but rather with the quantity of goods that we can buy. And if we can buy more goods with the same amount of money because prices are lower, then we are more prosperous.
This is why there is no reason to fear a drop in prices. And why the interventions by central banks to prevent prices from going down causes more harm than good to the economy.
Now, given all this, what should we do? I believe that within a few years, we will need to hold a serious debate about returning to the gold standard.”
​

[FONT=&quot]These kinds of remarks coming from a Canadian politician are rarer than the Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]As much of the Conservatives currently in government rail against updated sex-ed curriculums, immigration and Trudeau’s selfie obsession, you have Bernier discussing the meat and potatoes of what conservatism used to be about: small government, tax cuts for all, non-interventionism and monetary policy. It’s refreshing to finally have a Barry Goldwater-, Milton Friedman- or Ron Paul-type conservative in Canada, particularly in today’s times.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Here is a clip of Bernier talking to a young supporter:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]You can’t also forget that he cited Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises on his Facebook page this past summer![/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Right now, Bernier is competing against Trump-lites, Harperites and lightweights for the CPC nomination. So far, one can only hope that the former Foreign Affairs Minister can win the nomination and actually return this kind of conservativism to the forefront of Canadian politic[/FONT]

 

[Cdn_for_liberty]

I don't like the way things are going. Did anyone catch Maxime's rant against Kellie Leitch on his facebook?

here it is:

MADE IN CANADA
Donald Trump has a strong brand.
He’s won based on policies that Americans wanted.
Canada isn’t America.
Kellie Leitch isn’t Donald Trump.
When Kellie Leitch takes on the mainstream media, she breaks down and cries.
When Kellie Leitch had to face tough questions about barbaric cultural practices, she said she was just following orders.
She said if she could go back, she would not have made that announcement that day.
Now Kellie’s campaign stuck their finger in the air to find out which way the wind is blowing, and she’s doing a bad karaoke version of Donald Trump.
The problem is that Canada doesn’t need Donald Trump, and even if we did, it isn’t Kellie Leitch.
President Trump is on a mission to make America great again.
He’s going to slash their corporate taxes, and doing everything he can to attract investment.
Kellie’s solutions for Canada’s problems is clarifying the law so that we can carry mace and pepper spray.
She says she wants to cap the size of government, but I want to shrink it.
Becoming Prime Minister is a serious job.
We need an unapologetic leader that will stand up for Conservative values.
Not a leader that will fold like a cheap suit when the CBC asks tough questions.
I’ve always been clear and consistent.
You know what you get with me.
A principled politician who sticks to his guns.
I’ll cut taxes for every single Canadian.
I’ll cut taxes for every single business.
I’ll use solutions made in Canada.

I am worried that Maxime made the same mistake that Rand did when he took a shot a Trump early on.

 

[Wilf]

I don't like the way things are going. Did anyone catch Maxime's rant against Kellie Leitch on his facebook?

here it is:



I am worried that Maxime made the same mistake that Rand did when he took a shot a Trump early on.

Leitch is not Trump ... move on and Maxime is a more skilled politician than Rand so it would not hurt him.

 

[Seraphim]

I like Bernier, if he or Kevin O'Leary are the head of the Conservative party, I will be voting Conservative in the next election. If neither is the head, I will likely vote Libertarian.

 

[Wilf]

I like Bernier, if he or Kevin O'Leary are the head of the Conservative party, I will be voting Conservative in the next election. If neither is the head, I will likely vote Libertarian.

I don't oppose O'Leary but wouldn't he and Bernier step in each other boundaries. Oh, by the way, Bernier is announcing his monetary plan tomorrow (10:30 EST) here: https://www.facebook.com/hon.maximebernier/

 

[Seraphim]

I don't oppose O'Leary but wouldn't he and Bernier step in each other boundaries. Oh, by the way, Bernier is announcing his monetary plan tomorrow (10:30 EST) here: https://www.facebook.com/hon.maximebernier/

I'm skeptical of Bernier's ability to incite enough energy among the non-libertarians of Canada to move away from Trudeau and the Libs.

He had me at hello. There aren't enough like me to bank on that winning a PM race across the nation.

O'Leary on the other hand, if he runs, is absolutely Canada's version of Trump. He's a winning race horse. He absolutely has the star quality of a winner, he's a real fiscal conservative and has liberal social stances, so he will be able to garner support from all sides of the spectrum.

The "purist" in me wants Bernier (like Rand Paul during the Republican primaries). The realist in me looks at the fact that Trudeau is regarded as a super star by a lot of Liberals and many young voters love him. It's similar to the idolatry of Obama in the USA. It's perverse.

It's VERY likely going to take a SUPER STAR to beat the nonsensical cuckery that is Justin Trudeau and his horde of sycophants.

I think it's going to take O'Leary as the head of the Conservative movement to take this shit sandwich on.

From there O'Leary can give Bernier an important cabinet role and give him more responsibility than just his little riding of Beauce, Qc.

 

[Wilf]

I'm skeptical of Bernier's ability to incite enough energy among the non-libertarians of Canada to move away from Trudeau and the Libs.

He had me at hello. There aren't enough like me to bank on that winning a PM race across the nation.

O'Leary on the other hand, if he runs, is absolutely Canada's version of Trump. He's a winning race horse. He absolutely has the star quality of a winner, he's a real fiscal conservative and has liberal social stances, so he will be able to garner support from all sides of the spectrum.

The "purist" in me wants Bernier (like Rand Paul during the Republican primaries). The realist in me looks at the fact that Trudeau is regarded as a super star by a lot of Liberals and many young voters love him. It's similar to the idolatry of Obama in the USA. It's perverse.

It's VERY likely going to take a SUPER STAR to beat the nonsensical cuckery that is Justin Trudeau and his horde of sycophants.

I think it's going to take O'Leary as the head of the Conservative movement to take this shit sandwich on.

From there O'Leary can give Bernier an important cabinet role and give him more responsibility than just his little riding of Beauce, Qc.

That would have made sense, until Trudeau gave that Castro eulogy.

 

[Seraphim]

That would have made sense, until Trudeau gave that Castro eulogy.

A lot of lefties and misinformed youth like Castro. I don't think that did much of a dent for his support. Maybe some of the blue liberals didn't like it. I'll ask my dad.

 

[Cdn_for_liberty]

Shit just got real!

 

[Seraphim]

$#@! just got real!

Good. He may be the only one who can beat cuck Trudeau and his sycophants.

 

[Wilf]

Shit just got real!

Has it, really? From what I heard O'Leary is waiting until the competition get smaller but that is not going to happen for a long time. Also, Leitch is proving to be a bigger neoconservative, than Trump.

 

[Wilf]

Not really on the radar for most people who aren't farmers. The big ticket issues are jobs, the cost of living and taxes, at least from the feedback I've gathered.
I signed up to volunteer for Maxime's campaign and will be going to one of his fundraisers in a couple of weeks. I have the same butterflies I had when I found out about Ron Paul back in '07. I expect the same kind of push-back from the establishment.

Do you think the four Quebec mp endorsement of Andrew Scheer affects Bernier votes

 

[Seraphim]

Wow O'Leary just dropped out and vouched for...MAX BERNIER.