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Thread: Maxime Bernier Preparing Bid For Conservative Party Leadership

  1. #1

    Maxime Bernier Preparing Bid For Conservative Party Leadership

    OTTAWA — Maxime Bernier is testing the waters.

    The Conservative MP, and former foreign affairs and industry minister under Stephen Harper, is trying to get a team ready to plan his leadership bid to replace his former boss, he told The Huffington Post Canada in a year-end interview.

    "I need to have a big support of members in every province and also I need to have the money to do a campaign, so what I am looking at for now is whether or not I have that support."
    Speaking in his corner office on Parliament Hill overlooking the Ottawa River, Bernier looks pretty happy, comfortable, and excited about his future prospects.
    A framed news story — one of the few that hang on his walls — focuses on his potential as a future Conservative leader. Dated April 2007, it paints Bernier as Harper's likely successor, mentioning that he already has support out West.
    Of course, that was before Bernier was asked to resign as foreign affairs minister after he left his ministerial documents at then-girlfriend Julie Couillard's house — a woman with former ties to the Hells Angels. While he spent time in the political doghouse — as a junior minister for small business — Bernier criss-crossed the country giving speeches about small government and lower taxes.
    He developed quite a following at Conservative gatherings such as the Manning Networking Conference. After the election on Oct. 19, Bernier said he received calls from people across the country asking him to think seriously about becoming the Conservative Party of Canada's second leader. He even has caucus support outside of Quebec, he said.
    "The people are never wrong," Bernier said about the election result that booted the Tories from office and gave the Liberals a majority government. "We have to accept the result of the election campaign."
    Bernier proudly noted that Quebec is the only province that saw Conservative gains. Its five-person caucus grew to 12, in no small part owing to Denis Lebel, Harper's Quebec lieutenant who sought star candidates and ran a local campaign, Bernier said.
    "We ran a beautiful campaign, we focused our message on Conservative values — lower taxes, respect for the Constitution, and we were present in the regions of Quebec, and it worked.
    "What happened in the rest of Canada? I wasn't involved in the strategy in the rest of the country, I was working with Mr. Lebel, and I want to congratulate him," he said. "Now, we are looking towards the future."

    Bernier defends the Tories' focus on banning the niqab from citizenship ceremonies — saying he still believes giving the oath of citizenship should be taken with an exposed face. Quebecers, and Canadians, he said, didn't reject the Conservatives' program.

    "Perhaps they rejected the perception of the personality of the prime minister, but they did not reject the program of the party: lower taxes, respect for the Constitution, promises not to run deficits."

    Those are Conservative values Bernier wants to champion if he runs.
    A self-described libertarian, he said he'll focus his platform on a more decentralized federalism, a smaller government less involved in Canadians' day-to-day lives, as well as more personal freedoms.
    He might champion a flat tax — he wrote a book on the subject, he noted. He'll certainly call for balanced-budgets legislation — just like the one the Liberals plan to repeal. Since the election, he has already called for an end to corporate subsidies — fully aware of the paradox, since he dished them out as industry minister.
    "People in my party, they know who is Maxime Bernier. And so I have some ideas for the country but you need more than that to be a candidate," he said.
    He needs money. A lot of it. Well north of a million bucks for a good run, with teams in each region, large phone banks with which to call members, and a travel budget that allows him to expand his reputation in English Canada.
    If he can't mount a serious bid and doesn't think he can win, Bernier said, he "won't waste my time being a candidate.
    "You'll know that quickly, and I won't run."
    But if he has an organization, he'll take his time to build his team, he said, and announce his intentions only when he is sure he has the support he needs.
    So far two Ontario MPs, Tony Clement and Kellie Leitch, have expressed public interest in the Conservative leadership. But several others are rumoured to be interested, including: Jason Kenney, Lisa Raitt, Michelle Rempel and Michael Chong. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s name has also been tossed around as a potential contender.

    Just testing waters ?



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  3. #2


    A video explaining the situation of Bernier's rise.

  4. #3
    I’m in politics for the ideas,” says Maxime Bernier. And with that line alone he may be starting something of a mini-revolution in the Conservative leadership process.
    Bernier, who’s been the Conservative MP for the Quebec riding of Beauce for a decade, has confirmed he’s testing the waters for a potential leadership bid. In a phone interview, Bernier laid out what would be his philosophical underpinnings as leader.
    “If I run I will run for more freedom and less government intervention in our day-to-day lives,” says the man viewed as the most libertarian-leaning Conservative caucus member.
    His emphasis on abolishing handouts to businesses gives him appeal across the whole electorate. “It’s not the job of the government to give money to businesses,” he says, describing himself primarily as a fiscal conservative. “I think people understand that. Small businesses don’t have the connections or the time to get a handout from the government.”
    These opinions don’t emerge from an armchair critic’s perspective either. Bernier’s cabinet experience includes time as minister of industry and minister of state for small business.
    It’s refreshing to hear a potential candidate passionately articulate ideas from the get go. Conservative party rank and file will likely feel the same.
    These days leadership hopefuls from all parties too often run away from questions about policy and political philosophy, whereas they should be running towards them with abandon. They should be so brimful with ideas that it’s hard to get them to stop talking about them.
    Yet I’ve made this argument several times before and have had backroom boys “tsk, tsk” me by saying a leadership process is no time for ideas. Seriously.
    They try to argue that a leadership is about growing the membership, rallying the troops or rebuilding the brand. Well of course it is. But it’s through having good ideas that these goals are accomplished. They are, after all, what you’re going to be fighting for during a campaign.
    It's getting tiresome to hear leaders say their job is to "listen to the membership" and little else. That usually just means they either don’t have any ideas or don’t have the ability to proudly and publicly defend them through thick and thin. In other words, it means they don’t have leadership chops.
    For all his political and policy savvy, Stephen Harper too often failed to make the case for small government values. Sure, he argued his policies. He stood firm when the going got tough. But he rarely explained in simple language how his policy specifics fit into a wider narrative.
    For many conservatives around the world, the legacy of Ronald Reagan remains his ability to articulate the positive message of conservatism with a smile on his face.
    “You must have fun,” Bernier says. “You must explain things in a way that will be positive to Canadians because you want to bring policies that will create wealth and jobs. And that’s not the government that will do that – that’s people and entrepreneurs.”
    With this in mind, Bernier’s passion for ideas will help him attract a sizeable contingent of supporters from across the country, those who are desperate for someone to stand up and articulate the political message dear to them. It's way more appealing than rallying behind a candidate simply because "it's their time,” which politics too often sees.
    “We’re not in a rush,” says Bernier. “I don’t want to have a leadership in early spring 2016. I think we can wait and take the time. But maybe have it in fall 2017.”
    Clearly, this is a politician who has no problem talking about his strong convictions for months on end. Other leadership hopefuls better be prepared to do the same. If not, they’ll come across as empty suits.
    So the race hasn’t begun and Bernier’s already raised the bar. That’s a good thing.

  5. #4
    Calgary in Afghanistan: Snow Job in the Flush of Spring
    by Neil Kitson, April 25, 2008
    Print This | Share This

    Calgary’s weather is notoriously capricious, particularly this year, when horrendoussnowfalls have occurred unseasonably. Meanwhile, Maxime "Mad Max" Bernier, Canada’s minister for foreign affairs and international trade, a loose-ish cannon who has already been in trouble for taking a scantily clad date to an official Ottawa ceremony, has put his foot in it again by speaking the truth: namely, there’s corruption in Afghanistan. The repercussions have been deafening. Max’s career is in doubt.
    On the other hand, there’s David Bercuson, a Canadian military apologist who’s into the Canadian military-industrial complex up to his ischial tuberosities and who has written a Goebbels-like explanation for Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. We’re there, in David’s opinion, to rescue Afghans from the depredations of the Taliban. But he warns us that without guns there is no butter. And to hell with history.
    Who is David Bercuson, and why is he advising us on Afghanistan? How is it that Max Bernier is on a short leash, while some guy from the University of Calgary is articulating government policy at public expense? Whoever he is, Bercuson has conducted a "fact-finding-tour sponsored by the Department of National Defense" and written about it in the Globe and Mail, although the final location of the "facts" he has "found" is unclear. I had presumed (probably naively) that the Department of Foreign Affairs, or whatever its current title is, exists to find facts about the rest of the world, the better to advise the government of the day. Apparently not. We needed the Manley Report (at unimaginable cost) to provide the government with information readily available from its own civil service with much less bias, and even then, we need academics to find facts at public expense.
    Meanwhile back at the Globe and Mail (the only hope for Canadian newspapers, a rag that publishes impressively discordant points of view), Amir Attaran, a professor at the University of Ottawa, published an almost coy article stating that "The Department of National Defense is intruding on academic financing, spending millions of dollars sponsoring think tanks and scholars to offer up agreeable commentary." Bercuson, a scholar from the University of Calgary, freshly back from Afghanistan, offered up shocked commentary that Rick Hillier would resign as chief of the defense staff at the peak of his career and effectiveness. It is of considerable Orwellian interest that Bercuson is weighing in on this subject with the Globe and Mail, while no one has asked Attaran his opinion.
    There is a crucial distinction to be made between an interest in the truth and a conclusion for which evidence is subsequently sought. Anyone with an interest in the truth would acknowledge the long and difficult history of Afghanistan, its tribal culture, its painful experience under the occupation of the Soviet Union (or for that matter, Great Britain), and its subsequent oppression by the Taliban. Anyone with an interest in the truth would also acknowledge the intense distress caused by mine fields that continue to exist, the lack of basic services such as clean water, and the drug trade that leads farmers to grow poppies. Anyone interested in the truth would acknowledge that nobody in NATO was particularly interested in the people of Afghanistan before 9/11, much as NATO is not particularly interested in Zimbabwe now. Anyone with an interest in the truth would acknowledge the role of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the rise of the Taliban and the development of what is called "terrorism." You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.
    American Gen. Dan K. McNeill, a guy who suggested that 400,000 troops would be necessary to successfully occupy Afghanistan, has said that the Afghan National Armywould be ready by 2011 to effectively "’have control of much of the rest of the country… By about 2011 there is going to be some pretty good capacity in the Afghan National Army,’ he said."
    Here’s Jane’s on the same subject:
    "On 3 December, the Afghan Ministry of Defense called for the country’s fledgling indigenous defense force, the Afghan National Army (ANA), to increase in size to 200,000 personnel.
    "According to ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi, such a number would be sufficient to provide security to the entire country, and would ‘cost international forces less than the expenses of their forces in Afghanistan.’
    "This statement, which must appear compelling to the increasingly ponderous governments of several key NATO member governments, is unfortunately little more than a fantastic aspiration with little sign of being achieved within any moderate time scale.
    "The dreamlike scenario of 200,000 well-equipped, properly paid, highly motivated ANA soldiers defending the Afghan state from every conceivable security threat is one that punctuates the sleep of senior Western politicians and military leaders alike. Unfortunately, they awake to a very different reality."
    Max, tell it like it is.

    Found this one?


  6. #5
    Dear friends, good afternoon. It’s nice to see everyone here today.
    Let me get right to the question we were asked: if I decide to run, how will I do it?
    The answer is very clear in my mind: I will run a campaign based on substance and ideas. The whole reason I’m in politics is to defend and promote conservative values. I grew up with these conservative values, they are who I am.
    I am from Beauce, a region that is well known as the most entrepreneurial in Quebec. This is where I learned the values that go with entrepreneurship: individual freedom, personal responsibility, integrity, and self-reliance.
    But of course, these are also universal values – values that are at the core of Western civilization. Values that have made this country prosperous and a great place to live.
    There is a large constituency for these small-government principles. Many people who don’t necessarily consider themselves conservative and who did not vote for us are fed up with a big government overborrowing and overspending. A big government trying to manage our lives from the cradle to the grave. And we can safely bet they will be even more fed up four years from now!
    However, I find that we conservatives have not always been keen on openly defending these small-government principles.
    Let’s take the issue of corporate subsidies. Free-market economists unanimously decry them as inefficient and a waste of taxpayers’ money. They’re also grossly unfair. They favour some types of businesses at the expense of others. They create a constant demand for government intervention in the economy.
    I’m pretty sure that almost everyone in this room understands that instead of handing out government grants, we should reduce taxes and provide a more favourable environment to all businesses. Everyone would benefit.
    If there is one conservative economic policy that absolutely everyone should support, this is it.
    Yet, during the ten years that we were in power, our government continued to provide billions of dollars in support to businesses. Why? Were we afraid?
    It’s not enough to know that a policy is bad. We also have to explain why. Explain it again and again, if we want a majority of Canadians to understand and support the change of policy. Otherwise, we are forced to compromise, to dilute our policies, and contradict our principles.
    In every survey, politicians as a group are way down the list in terms of public confidence. I think one reason people are so cynical is that they do not believe us. They don’t see us as defending clear goals and principles. Or acting on these principles.
    If we want conservative principles to win the battle, we have to defend them openly, with passion and with conviction. We should not be afraid of saying the hard truths that need to be said.
    I am not afraid.
    Last November, when Bombardier came knocking at the door of the federal government to ask for another billion dollars in help, I instead proposed to abolish all government subsidies to businesses.
    GM in Ontario asked for subsidies at the same time. I also said GM should not be getting any money. I’m willing to say the same thing, whichever company or region is involved.
    Several years ago, I was attacked by most of the Quebec political class when I raised the issue of equalization. Quebec has been getting more than half of the money from the equalization program for years. I said to Quebecers I was not proud of that.
    I was not afraid to say that to my fellow Quebecers. Because I want us to find a solution to this poor economic performance. Many Quebecers share my concerns. And today, it’s not taboo anymore to raise this issue in Quebec.
    But you know what? Manitoba and three Atlantic provinces get even more equalization money per capita than Quebec, and so are even more dependent on Ottawa. Can we say that too?
    Instead of beating around the bush, can we be frank and open about the real situation? The point is not to stigmatize some provinces. It is to recognize problems so that we can address them. There is no other way. We must have a relevant discussion about what policies need to be changed to be fair to all parts of our country, and to bring prosperity to all parts of our country.
    At a time when Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland-and-Labrador are hurting because of the crash in the oil sector, when the government of Ontario is burdening the country’s largest economy with more taxes and more debt, we can’t afford to be complacent.
    We Conservatives have to show everyone that we have solutions. Not solutions involving Ottawa redistributing money from some regions to others. But solutions based on a freer economy, on responsibility and fairness.
    If I decide to run, what kind of candidate will I be?
    First of all, I will reach out to all Conservative members, to all Canadians. Listen and talk to them dans les deux langues officielles.
    One of our colleagues, Kevin O’Leary, said in an interview a couple of weeks ago that he did not need to learn French to become prime minister. He said he’s always been amused by politicians who take French classes and try to speak French in Quebec City when everybody answers them in English.
    Well, Kevin, when you go to restaurants and tourist places in Quebec City, of course, people will answer in English. As they do in Amsterdam, Vienna and Rome. They want your business! It doesn’t mean you can govern Italy without speaking Italian.
    When I visit every region of our great country, it won’t be as a tourist.
    I want to be a unifying candidate.
    Quebec was the bright spot for our party in the last election. It was the only province where we increased our number of seats, from five to twelve. But there are 66 more seats to contest. And I know I can sell conservative ideas to Quebecers and also to all Canadians.
    Many years ago, a journalist described me as “the Albertan from Quebec” because I sounded like a Western Conservative, despite my bad accent in English.
    But there is actually no such thing as a Western Conservative or a Quebec or an Atlantic Canada Conservative. There are only Conservatives.
    If I decide to run, it will be to reaffirm that only the Conservative Party of Canada can insure that we will be a secure, stable and prosperous country.
    But I also want to fire up the imagination of Canadians with how much more free, dynamic, and successful we could become if we applied conservative values more consistently.
    That’s how I will do it if I decide to run…
    Thank you.

  7. #6
    He is in.

    Former cabinet minister Maxime Bernier is reportedly preparing to file the papers to run for the vacant leadership of the Conservative Party.
    Several reports suggest he'll make his candidacy official by the end of the week.
    Bernier was first elected to the House of Commons in 2006 as the MP for Beauce, and has been re-elected three times since then. Along the way, he's held several positions in Stephen Harper's cabinet, including the industry, foreign affairs, and small business and tourism portfolios.
    The Conservatives will pick their new leader at a convention on May 27, 2017.

  8. #7

  9. #8



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  11. #9
    I am very glad that Maxime is entering the race. He will be my ideal choice and Jason Kenney would be my second choice. However, I think Maxime should work

    Interesting, I just watched that clip you posted and I looked down the bottom and there was a clip that says the NDP delegates voted to have a leadership race. That's pretty big stuff. I know Mulcair wants to be the "Tony Blair" of the NDP but I think he pretty much failed on that and really underperformed, pissing away the Jack Layton legacy. I think Mulcair will be ousted soon and they'll try to get a Jeremy Corbyn/Bernie Sanders far-left leader. Maybe that will bring back vote splits amongst the left? I just hope the Conservatives won't just be banking on that just like they did the past 9 years.

  12. #10
    Last Friday, I gave an interview to host Jordi Morgan at the Halifax radio station News 95.7. As part of a discussion on the federal government’s intrusions into areas of provincial jurisdictions, the show’s host asked me whether governments have a role to play in fostering a national identity through legislation, with laws like the Canada Health Act.

    I answered that people know who they are and that it’s not the government’s role to create and protect a national identity. I used Quebec as an example and said that we don’t need Bill 101 to protect the French language.I did not expect to create such a storm by expressing my belief that we should let people act like free and responsible individuals, including when it comes to protecting their language, instead of relying on government coercion to do it for them.
    This has since generated several denunciations from public figures in Quebec and a wave of angry comments on the Internet.
    Some people say I am not a “real Quebecer” and are accusing me of “attacking Quebec” simply because I want to be more popular in the rest of Canada. They seem unable to conceive that it’s possible to have a different position than theirs on the basis of fundamental principles.
    My position is this: Yes, it’s important that Quebec remain a predominantly French-language society. And ideally, everyone in Quebec should be able to speak French. But we should not try to reach this goal by restricting people’s rights and freedom of choice.
    French will survive if Quebecers cherish it and want to preserve it; it will flourish if Quebec becomes a freer, more dynamic and prosperous society; it will thrive if we make it an attractive language that newcomers want to learn and use. Not by imposing it and by preventing people from making their own decisions in matters that concern their personal lives.
    Whenever the issue of Bill 101 is raised, it is often claimed that “there is a consensus in Quebec” about it: apart from some extremist English-rights activists and traitors to Quebec, everybody is presumed to agree with Bill 101. It’s a settled matter that cannot be questioned. That makes it easier to isolate and denigrate those who raise any criticism about it.
    But that consensus simply does not exist. For example, a poll conducted last year by the respected firm L้ger Marketing showed that 66 per cent of Quebecers, including a 61 per cent clear majority of francophones, agreed with the principle that everyone in Quebec should be free to choose their language of education.
    Why should francophone parents not be allowed to send their children to an English or bilingual school for parts of their studies, so that they become completely fluent in both languages? English is the language of 350 million people surrounding us. It is also the most important international language all over the world. Mastering it is a major asset.
    Not only this, but there has been an important English-speaking population in Quebec for 250 years. Unless we believe that Quebec today is simply an extension of New France, and that only descendants of the French settlers are real Quebecers, then English too is part of Quebec’s identity.
    In a free and democratic society, we should be able to say these things and debate them calmly without being pilloried. I am disappointed to see that many will even question my right to express a personal opinion on this matter in public.
    What is also troubling is that there is no one in Quebec at the political level who is willing to speak up for this silent majority that wants fewer restrictive laws and more positive incentives to promote the use of French while remaining open to English. What should we conclude from this, other than that this is a clear indication that our political life is somewhat dysfunctional?
    That being said, Bill 101 is a provincial issue and my position does not involve my party or my government. I speak here as a Quebecer. I will continue to do so because I love Quebec and I want it to become the freest and most prosperous place in North America.

  13. #11
    Last week, I attended the Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa. I had the pleasure to meet one of the greatest defenders of freedom and small government in the world, former Congressman Ron Paul, who gave the keynote speech. I also made a presentation on how to attract new supporters to the Conservative Party at one of the panels with my colleague Jason Kenney (photo: Jake Wright). The text of my speech is reproduced below.
    So, to answer the question, how can we continue to attract new supporters?We are discussing today on this panel if the federal Conservative Party has reached a high water mark. I hope not. Because if that’s the case, there won’t be any Conservative left in Quebec when we hit the low water mark! I mean, outside of my riding of Beauce, of course!
    In conventional politics, the way to get more supporters is usually to reach for the center. If you are on the right for example, all voters who share right-wing beliefs and ideas are assumed to support you already. So if you want to get more support, you make proposals that are a bit more to the left. You do the opposite if you are a left-wing party.
    That may be a winning strategy to some extent, in some circumstances. If we’re talking about social or moral issues, or foreign policy for example. It’s obvious that we need to be sensitive to the majority’s opinion and to reach for a broader consensus on such issues.

    But when it comes to economic issues, I don’t buy that. I think being more conservative on economic issues is the way to make our economy more dynamic, our country more prosperous, and ultimately to increase our support among voters.There are only two directions we can take on this issue. Either we create new programs, increase spending and increase taxes – in short, increase the size of government. Or we do the opposite and reduce the size of government.
    The evolution of government size
    All over the world during the 20th century, the scope, size and powers of government have grown tremendously.
    Take for example public spending as a proportion of gross domestic product, that is, the portion of the overall economy controlled by governments. In the principal countries of the western world, it has gone from around 10% a century ago to beyond 40% today.
    In Canada, public spending peaked at 53% of GDP in the early 1990s, which put us in the same league as socialist countries like France and the Scandinavian countries. Fortunately, we reversed this trend in the past two decades. Public spending had gone down to 40% of GDP by 2008.
    This is the main reason, I think, why Canada has been one of the top performers among industrialized countries since that time. And why we got through the recent crisis better than the others.
    During the crisis however, government started growing again. If we take only federal program spending as a proportion of GDP, it went from 13% in 2006 to 16% in 2009. Since then, it has slowly been going down. If everything goes according to plan, we should be back at 13% in 2016.
    Note that this is not because spending is going down. Our government has made spending cuts, but overall, total program spending is actually going to increase in the coming years. It is simply increasing less rapidly than the economy, which is why it is going down relative to the economy.
    I believe we should be bolder. We should be more conservative. We should stop growing the size of government in real terms. Government is big enough already.
    The benefits of smaller government
    If we look at the available data, the evidence is quite clear that there are only benefits to having smaller government.
    Most of you have probably heard about the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World annual report. It looks at more than 20 components of economic freedom. Not only the size of government but also other components such as enforcement of property rights and freedom to trade.
    Countries in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per-capita GDP of $38,000 in 2010, compared to $5,000 for bottom quartile countries.
    The poorest 10% of people in the most economically free countries are twice as rich as the people in the least free countries. The poor also benefit from smaller government and economic freedom.
    Life expectancy is 80 years in the top quartile compared to 62 years in the bottom quartile. And political and civil liberties are considerably higher in economically free nations than in unfree nations.
    The logic underlying the benefits of small government is the following. Governments can only spend what they have taken out of the real economy. A government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody. A government cannot inject resources into the economy unless it has first extracted them from taxpayers through taxes or put us further into debt by borrowing the money.
    Government spending always competes with private sector spending for scarce resources. Moreover, bureaucracies use resources less efficiently than private businesses, which have to remain competitive to be profitable and survive. When you divert resources from the more productive uses that they can find in the private sector to less productive uses in the public sector, you will see less growth.
    A proposal from Beauce
    What should we, as conservatives, do to reverse this trend? One way to change the terms of the debate would be to announce that the government is not going to grow anymore.
    In January, the convention of the Quebec wing of the Conservative Party of Canada was held in Victoriaville. It adopted resolutions from local associations in preparation for the national convention next June in Calgary.
    Among the resolutions adopted was one put forward by the association of my riding of Beauce. The resolution proposes to freeze government spending at 300 billion dollars from the moment when the budget is balanced in 2015-2016 and for the four subsequent years.
    Of course, I gave my support to this resolution from the members of my riding and I hope it will become official party policy at the national convention next June. It is similar to a Zero Budget Growth proposal I made in a speech three years ago.
    The idea is that given economic growth and inflation, a freeze in current dollar spending would have the effect of reducing both the spending to GDP ratio and real spending in constant dollar amounts.
    The meaning of Zero Budget Growth
    Think about what a frozen budget would mean. From that moment on, any government decision has to be taken within this budgetary constraint. Every new government program, or increase in an existing program, has to be balanced by a decrease somewhere else.
    It means that we no longer have debates about how much more generous the government can be with this or that group, as if the money belonged to the government instead of taxpayers.
    The focus of the debate is shifting to a determination of priorities: what are the most important tasks for government to achieve with the money we have? Is this government function really important and should we have more of it? Then what should we do less or stop doing and leave in the hands of the free market, voluntary organisations and individual citizens?
    That would be quite a change, don’t you think? A commitment to Zero Budget Growth could become a powerful symbol of fiscal conservatism. But the consequences would be much deeper.
    It would mean that every year, the relative size of government would be smaller. It would mean more prosperity through less government. It would force politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and everybody else to stop thinking that your salaries are just there to grab for their own benefit. And because of the budgetary constraints, Canadians would have a lot more confidence that we’re not wasting their money.
    There is a large constituency for these small-government principles. Many people who don’t necessarily consider themselves conservative and who don’t vote for us are fed up with government overspending. They want to pay fewer taxes and they want their children to be debt free.
    I believe that would be popular in Quebec too. There is a large proportion of Quebecers who believe that the federal government is too big and intervenes too much in too many areas. It may be for fiscal conservative reasons or for nationalist reasons but they want a small government in Ottawa.
    We have to convince people that we’re not simply aiming to be better managers of a bigger government; we are aiming to be better managers of a smaller government. Being more fiscally conservative and defending the principles of individual freedom, personal responsibility and smaller government is the way to get their support.
    Because Canadians want lower taxes to keep their money in their pockets. Because Canadians want to be able to go as far as their talents, ambitions, creativity and industry can take them. Because ultimately, Canadians support economic freedom and a free society. In other words, limiting government is a lofty endeavor. It is a powerful message that will give us more supporters.
    If we do this, and if we ensure that Canada becomes an even more prosperous country, I can tell you that the Conservative Party will reach an even higher water mark! Thank you.

    Interesting.


  14. #12
    The Canadian libertarian Maxime Bernier has kicked off his bid for the leadership of the Conservative party. Taking the party back from the neocons is a huge undertaking, but with the sad way things are going in the US with Trump & Clinton, Maxime's task ahead & the potential Brexit are becoming my 2 items to follow very closely.

    Here is an article explaining why he shouldn't be taken so lightly:

    http://www.torontosun.com/2016/05/14...nier-advantage

    There’s something about Maxime Bernier that makes him different from everyone else likely to run to be next leader of the federal Conservatives.

    It’s something that could not only see him win the leadership next year, but see him beat Justin Trudeau in 2019. Let’s call it The Bernier Advantage.

    Do you ever get that feeling when you’re watching a politician that they don’t really believe what they’re saying? That everything coming out of their mouth is a bunch of gobbledygook designed to fill time and make them look regal rather than actually words spoken from the heart? Do you ever get the sense that the random mish-mash of policies that they’re hawking aren’t things they’ve been passionate about for years but tidbits just devised the day before to appeal to some special interest group?

    Of course you have. And you’d be right. Pretty much every time. Because this cocktail of insincerity explains most politicians. They run for office for many reasons: because of the power, influence and future earning potential; because they like the clubby culture; because – my personal least favourite – it’s “their time” whatever the hell that means.

    Sadly, the best reason to run for office is also the least frequent one: Because they have firm political convictions to fight for what they believe will improve people’s lives.

    Bernier, the MP for the Quebec riding of Beauce who on Sunday is announcing his candidacy, is very much a conviction politician. This class of politician, who will remain steadfast in their views no matter what, should have a better chance than many flip-floppers because they actually stand for something.

    “I want a freer and more prosperous country,” Bernier told David Akin in a recent interview. “And the way to do that is to have a limited government. I’m a real Conservative. I believe in freedom, responsibility, fairness and respect. That’s the four themes of my campaign. Every public policy will be based on these four themes.”

    Conviction is the first of three planks that form Bernier’s advantage. You’re not going to see it from many, if any, of the others.

    The second is consistency. Bernier – who’s been minister of industry, foreign affairs and small business and tourism – is a self-described libertarian, which simply put means he favours human innovation and liberty over bloated government imposing restrictions. These are firmly held views that you don’t just pick up one day from the focus group tests.

    He’ll stick to his guns. He doesn’t need to be taught to stay on message, because the message is authentic and isn’t changing anyway. It’s who he is. The public can sense these things. They’ll find it refreshing and honest, kind of like they do when Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump speaks. Meanwhile they roll their eyes at establishment candidates like Hillary Clinton.

    The third is that his views are very much in line with where the Canadian public is at right now – which is obviously key to winning a general election. Bernier is very much a social liberal. But he’s also truly fiscally conservative in a common sense way – like his vocal opposition to the Bombardier bail-out and all forms of crony capitalism. Does any Canadian out there genuinely think their hard-earned money should be redistributed to big business? Of course not. But few politicians have the balls to state this obvious point.

    Right now Bernier is doing poorly in the polls. So far they place Peter MacKay and Kevin O’Leary out in front with strong support while everyone else, including Bernier, trails with single digits.

    This is likely because he’s currently seen as one of the uninspired former Harper cabinet ministers just sticking around for the job because, hey, why not. Party members and activists I’ve spoken with place Tony Clement, Kellie Leitch, Lisa Raitt and others in this category.

    But I predict once the broader membership and general public watches him in action and listens to what he has to say he’ll join the frontrunners, if only because he’s actually saying something real and with genuine conviction.

    There will of course be challenges aplenty. The media and opposition will try to paint him as an anti-government radical, due to his libertarian leanings. He’ll need to beat them to the punch by defining himself in the eyes of the public before others can do it first.

    And if he can succeed in getting his message across to that diverse sampling of Canadians who feel left out by today’s political machine, he can get non-traditional momentum behind him like we’ve seen with Sanders, Trump and Ford Nation.

    It’ll be an interesting campaign to watch develop. Make no mistake, this is no second tier candidacy.
    "There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

    And that I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave." ~ HST

  15. #13
    https://soundcloud.com/brianlilley/b...eyond-the-news

    Here's an interview that Maxime had with conservative commentator Brian Lilley

  16. #14
    Maxime Bernier knows what it’s like to be a politician under scrutiny.The four-term Conservative MP from Quebec, now running for the leadership of his party, resigned as minister of foreign affairs in 2008 after it was revealed that he left classified documents at the house of his then girlfriend – who happened to have past ties to organized crime.
    But when he assesses the current controversy surrounding Foreign Affairs Minister St้phane Dion’s approval of a $15-billion Saudi armoured vehicle deal, which began under the previous Conservative government, Mr. Bernier feels no sympathy.
    “He lost a lot of credibility,” he says of Mr. Dion over a lunch of warm vegetable salad on a downtown Ottawa patio. “Tell Canadians that you don’t like the deal so you won’t go ahead, or you like the deal and you’re going ahead.”
    What about Mr. Bernier, who prides himself on the conviction of his principles?
    “Because of what’s happening right now in the news and all that, I think it’s good to do a review,” he says, referring to reports of the Saudi government using armoured vehicles to suppress internal dissent.
    After a pause, he answers: “I think I won’t go ahead with that deal.”
    Although his own time as foreign minister didn’t end how he had hoped, Mr. Bernier says he has taken responsibility and moved on – even laughing at the political cartoons that still poke fun at his misfortune.
    After his resignation, he spent three years on the back benches. He was one of only five Conservative MPs from Quebec to survive the 2011 election, and was brought back into the cabinet, albeit in a minor role as minister of state for small business and tourism.
    “What I learned is very simple,” he says. “Being more cautious with confidential documents.”
    Mr. Bernier, a spry 53-year-old who ran a 100-kilometre ultramarathon three years ago for charity, is the second Conservative thus far to declare for the Conservative leadership. MP Kellie Leitch has also thrown her hat into the ring. MP Michael Chong will make an announcement Monday on “the future of the Conservative Party.”
    The leadership vote itself doesn’t take place until May 27, 2017 – and the marathon runner is taking the long road.
    On Sunday, Mr. Bernier will officially launch his campaign in his riding of Beauce, where he will hand out free St-Hubert chicken at a local arena. It’s reminiscent of the time he hand-delivered Quebec-made Jos Louis cakes to the troops in Afghanistan. Which, he points out, he paid for himself. “It cost me a thousand bucks,” he says.
    Mr. Bernier says he came to his decision to be one of the first leadership contenders out of the gate to replace former prime minister Stephen Harper after travelling the country and assessing his support.
    The self-described “free-market guy” who favours small government and low taxes, and is highly critical of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “socialist” deficit spending, has a loyal following in Quebec and Alberta and is well versed in the language of political fundraising.
    “I know that I have an organization all across the country,” he says. (Whether he will come up with another spectacularly anachronistic jingle, as he did during the 2015 election campaign, remains to be seen.)
    He expects more Conservatives to declare their candidacy by the fall, with potential candidates rumoured to include MPs Jason Kenney, Tony Clement and Lisa Raitt, along with former cabinet minister Peter MacKay and maybe even reality TV host Kevin O’Leary.
    While he is well known within the party, Mr. Bernier recognizes that he still isn’t a household name in English Canada. And what if the unilingual Mr. O’Leary decides to run? “I’m waiting [for] the time to have a debate with him in French,” he says, with a smile.
    Mr. Bernier says his leadership campaign will include regular speeches and policy announcements focusing on four themes: individual freedom, personal responsibility, respect and fairness. He also supports some of the socially liberal policies to be debated at the Conservative convention later this month in Vancouver. “I think we must say yes to gay marriage,” he says.
    For Mr. Bernier, fairness means abolishing subsidies for big businesses – such as Quebec aerospace firm Bombardier.
    He’s also a pipeline proponent who wouldn’t tolerate meddling from provincial or municipal politicians, including Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, who is opposed to the Energy East pipeline.
    It is not his jurisdiction,” he says. “I won’t take the phone and call him, it is not his business.”
    Perhaps most controversially in his home province, Mr. Bernier says he is reviewing his previous support for supply management – the tightly regulated system that protects Canada’s dairy and poultry farmers from most imports.
    I will have a position, and people will judge me with that position after, if I’m a real principled politician or not,” he says. “And I know that.”
    I find some of these positions interesting.

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by SneakyFrenchSpy View Post
    The Canadian libertarian Maxime Bernier has kicked off his bid for the leadership of the Conservative party. Taking the party back from the neocons is a huge undertaking, but with the sad way things are going in the US with Trump & Clinton, Maxime's task ahead & the potential Brexit are becoming my 2 items to follow very closely.

    As someone from Quebec, how big is the issue of supply management?
    Last edited by Wilf; 05-23-2016 at 06:41 PM.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Wilf View Post
    As someone from Quebec, how big is the issue of supply management?
    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.
    "There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

    And that I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave." ~ HST



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  20. #17
    Anyone been following what happened at the CPC convention? There was a vote to redefine the definition of marriage and the side that wanted change won out. Maxime was part of that group. I am not against people who are LGBT but from learning from Ron and Rand, it's best that the conservative movement should steer towards getting government out of marriage. Also, in the long term culture war, basically we are ceding ground to the left by allowing them to segregate people even more. Facebook already showed us about 50 sexual orientations already so we know which direction the left is going.

    To me, this vote seem more like a panic vote and hope the CBC SJW leftist machine doesn't call conservative homophobes, transphobes or whatever. I thought Maxime would take Rand's approach and I am disappointed he didn't do that. Hopefully, he'll clarify his stance soon.

    Right now, I can't help but see that the Conservative leadership race will almost mirror the Republican nomination. Kevin O'Leary is our Trump but is more ideological than Trump. Nonetheless, Kevin's going to present himself has a fiscal conservative/social liberal candidate and that might cut into Maxime's territory.

    Here's an interview that Kevin did at the convention:



    I am not supporting Kevin but just want to give you guys a heads up on what we are facing here.

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Cdn_for_liberty View Post
    Anyone been following what happened at the CPC convention? There was a vote to redefine the definition of marriage and the side that wanted change won out. Maxime was part of that group. I am not against people who are LGBT but from learning from Ron and Rand, it's best that the conservative movement should steer towards getting government out of marriage. Also, in the long term culture war, basically we are ceding ground to the left by allowing them to segregate people even more. Facebook already showed us about 50 sexual orientations already so we know which direction the left is going.

    To me, this vote seem more like a panic vote and hope the CBC SJW leftist machine doesn't call conservative homophobes, transphobes or whatever. I thought Maxime would take Rand's approach and I am disappointed he didn't do that. Hopefully, he'll clarify his stance soon.
    He did: https://www.facebook.com/hon.maximebernier/. Bernier mention that the resolutions removes the party hostility to all types of marriages, not only LGBT, so thats why he supports it. The media was probably using LGBT cause for some extra clicks.
    Last edited by Wilf; 05-31-2016 at 11:02 AM.

  22. #19
    Interesting, I haven't been keeping up with Canadian politics. Keep us posted with any developments guys.
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    It's a balance between appeasing his supporters, appeasing the deep state and reaching his own goals.
    ~Resident Badgiraffe




  23. #20
    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?
    "There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

    And that I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave." ~ HST

  24. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by SneakyFrenchSpy View Post
    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.
    Last edited by Wilf; 05-31-2016 at 11:49 AM.

  25. #22
    Maxime still supports a gold standard

    Apparently he reads Mises and Hayek.

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Cdn_for_liberty View Post
    Maxime still supports a gold standard

    Apparently he reads Mises and Hayek.
    He, also likes Bastiat.🤗

  27. #24
    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.



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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Cdn_for_liberty View Post
    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.

  30. #26
    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.

  31. #27
    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 Qu้b้cois raised $99,732.58 from 874 contributors.


  32. #28
    Interesting...

    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.His name is Maxime Bernier.

    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.
    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.
    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.
    Here is what he wrote:
    “…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.”
    These kinds of remarks coming from a Canadian politician are rarer than the Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup.
    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.
    Here is a clip of Bernier talking to a young supporter:

    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!

    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

  33. #29
    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.

  34. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Cdn_for_liberty View Post
    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.

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