Maxime Bernier: Can populism become popular in Canada?

Maxime Bernier has quit the Conservative Party of Canada, months after losing its leadership race. Getty Images

A new political party in Canada hopes to capitalise on the global rise of populism during this autumn’s election. But can the People’s Party get people’s attention?

Around the world, voters have chosen what political scientists call “populism” — a rejection of the established order and so-called “elites”.

It happened in the US with Donald Trump, and in Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro. Some would argue that Brexit, and the triumph of Boris Johnson during the Conservative leadership race, would also fit the definition.

On the left, Bernie Sanders has been labelled populist for shaking up the old guard in the Democratic Party.

While the traditional political order has undergone an enormous upheaval around the globe, Canada has been something of a steady eddy since the election of Justin Trudeau in 2015.

But a new political party in Canada hopes to change that.

The People’s Party of Canada was formed last summer, when MP Maxime Bernier quit the Conservative Party after a fallout over statements he made online about immigration and multiculturalism.

“I have come to realise over the past year that this party is too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed,” Mr Bernier said at the time.

Who is Maxime Bernier?

One brave young man takes on gender inequality at USC

Misandry — the hatred of men — has been a staple of my polemical writing for more than fifteen years. I felt a special obligation to hammer away at gender myths such as intimate partner violence (women are about as likely as men to initiate violence against their partners as men), false sexual allegations (a disturbing percentage of such allegations) and demonstrable bias against fathers in family court, because male journalists who dared to write sympathetically about men and/or critically about women put their careers in jeopardy (no exaggeration), and most had learned to keep shtumm in this domain.

That situation has been changing slowly but steadily. Some men have decided they aren’t going to spend their lives in rhetorical purdah on the subject of their own cultural dhimmitude, and have been stepping up to the plate, whatever the personal cost. The university campus is home to the feminist commissariat — and it’s a brave man who dares to stick his head above that formidable parapet. Because the cost of doing so can be high.

This is the story of one such activist who paid a price, which only fueled his resistance efforts, and which in turn inspired others, in reversing a decades-long erosion of men’s rights on campus.

In a meeting held in June, 2017, Kursat Christoff Pekgoz was pressured by his academic director at the University of Southern California into terminating his PhD degree in English Literature on what Pekgoz considered spurious and unprecedented grounds, accompanied by “many threats and irrational exaggerations” (the meeting was recorded). His contract was not renewed and his funding was cut off. This is extremely uncommon. In fact, Pekgoz is unaware of any other PhD student being denied a doctoral degree in English Literature [at USC].

The Downfall of Canada’s Dreamy Boyfriend

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“He is getting so embarrassing, tbh.”

That was the text I woke up to this morning from a friend who, like me, is a Canadian living in the United States. She was talking about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and yesterday’s Time magazine bombshell report that he once wore brownface to an “Arabian Nights” party while a teacher at a private school in Vancouver in 2001. (Since Time’s story broke, other instances of Mr. Trudeau in blackface and brownface have surfaced, including a video.)

My friend was referring to how Mr. Trudeau is seen on the world stage, but especially in the United States, a country that had a tendency to pretend that Canada didn’t exist until Mr. Trudeau came along. And her text encapsulated a distinction I’ve noticed in how Americans have been receiving this story compared with Canadians. For Americans, Mr. Trudeau’s downfall from liberal media darling — remember Rolling Stone’s 2017 cover, “Why can’t he be our president?” — to disgraced politician has been swift. For Canadians, it has been a long time coming.

It all started back in 2015 when Mr. Trudeau won a surprising majority victory over the longtime Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper. He cozied up to President Barack Obama, and the two young, charismatic world leaders had what the press affectionately called a “bromance.”

Conrad Black: Trudeau's not a racist, just a hypocrite and a weak leader

If the government generally was playing it straight and not trying to gain re-election by defaming its opponents, Trudeau could have expressed regret, claimed he’d learned and moved on

The election campaign to date has been an exercise in idiocy and cowardice. It is obviously embarrassing for Justin Trudeau to have had to admit to attending an Aladdin-themed party in 2001 made up to look like Aladdin (although Aladdin was an Arab not an African, and blackening his hands was oddly laborious). But Maxime Bernier is right that Justin is not a racist, just a hypocrite. As Tucker Carlson, the Fox News commentator, said on Thursday night, the prime minister’s conduct is “sort of like finding out your super-sensitive brother-in-law, the one who tells you he’s a feminist, the one who’s always scolding you for your sexism is, in fact, hitting on the babysitter.” The story broke in Time magazine and the spectacle of the United States splitting its sides laughing at a Canadian politician as they did over the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford is distressing to most Canadians. They rejoice in mocking American leaders; the reverse is mortifyingly embarrassing.

In fact, there was probably no intent to mock any racial or ethnic group in the several incidents that have been revealed (after Justin said on Wednesday night that there had only been one other in his life). This propensity for absurd costumes, from Superman and Lawrence of Arabia to the Afro wig and features, and the dreadful fiasco in India where he inflicted subterraneanly silly costumes on his entire family, is affected and worrisome. He was a drama teacher and his father liked exotic costumes and foreign lands, but poncing through India in traditional outfits was like the prime minister of France and his family coming to Canada dressed like Jacques Cartier in frilly shirts and voluminous breeches, buckled shoes and three-cornered felt hats. Justin would not have felt scatologically self-reproachful (“pissed off at myself” will not do as a public reflection from the leader of a serious country), and promised the media that there would be confessions to his children, if the entire Liberal campaign were not a systematic character assassination of Conservative candidates. One candidate at a time and a new one almost every day has been smeared with malicious tittle-tattle and innuendos that Liberal mud-slingers represent as proof of homophobia or misogyny.

Most Canadians Say Political Correctness Has Gone 'Too Far': Angus Reid Institute Poll

New survey also compares attitudes to those in U.S.

A majority of Canadians believe that political correctness infringes too much on their freedom of expression, a new poll suggests.

The numbers released Monday from the Angus Reid Institute show that 76 per cent of respondents think political correctness — loosely defined as the avoidance of certain words or actions that might offend marginalized groups — has gone “too far.”

Eighty-two per cent of Canadians over the age of 55 said they shared that view, compared to 78 per cent of those between 35–54. Sixty-seven per cent of those 18–34 feel the same.

The poll comes as America considers the possibility of electing Donald Trump president — a man who has railed against political correctness and who frequently spews offensive and outrageous remarks.

Though most Canadians have told pollsters they would not like to see Trump in the White House, the Angus Reid survey suggests many on this side of the border believe people are too easily insulted.

Two-thirds of respondents told the firm “too many people are easily offended these days over the language others use.”

Peter Schiff: Why the Fed Won’t Be Able to Rescue the Economy the Next Time Around

Peter Schiff has been saying that the Federal Reserve is going to take interest rates back to zero and launch another round of quantitative easing in order to reinflate the bubble economy after the next crash. The central bank successfully pulled this off after the 2008 crisis. By dropping rates to zero and holding them there for nearly a decade, and running three rounds of QE, the Fed has reinflated the real estate bubble, blown up a bond bubble and pumped up the stock market. But Peter said it’s not going to work the next time around. Instead, Fed monetary policy will tank the dollar and lead to an inflationary recession.

So, why can’t the Fed pull off another rescue? Peter explained why he thinks it’s not possible during an interview on the Tom Woods Show.

Peter admitted he didn’t think the Fed could rescue the economy in 2008.

I underestimated the ability of the Fed to get away with quantitative easing and for the world to basically accept this and to enable this.”

So today, we have even bigger bubbles than we did in 2006–2007.

Peter Schiff: A Very Violent Move in the Bond Market

It is considered that a very violent movement is currently established in the bond market. Thus, it is appropriate to emphasize that the former OMB director of the Reagan administration, David Stockman, has called this the “mother of all bond bubbles”. If so, a question arises, has that bubble burst? It remains to be seen, but the bonds were forged last week.

It should be noted that the bond market (also known as the debt, credit or fixed income market) is a financial market where participants buy and sell debt securities, usually in the form of bonds. References to the “bond market” usually refer to the state bond market because of its size, liquidity, lack of financial risk and, therefore, sensitivity to interest rates, the bond market is often used to indicate changes in interest rates or in the form of the yield curve.

Thus, it is understood that the bonds have moved more or less in conjunction with gold in recent weeks as perceptions of safe trade.

The recent decline could be established as a problem