The beauty and tranquility of La Beauce makes the region a must for tourists seeking the essence of Quebec’s joie de vivre. Each season in La Beauce offers its special attractions. This year, a new season has been added: it is political, it is the ‘silly season.’ It is Maxime Bernier’s introduction of his new political party: The People’s Party of Canada.
The party name tells it all. The name is classic in its hypocrisy. Think of all the contemporary politicians who talk about being for the people—are they really? Do they not just use people?
Is Mr. Bernier a people’s politician? Or is he just a libertarian? He looks down on Canada’s conservatives. He calls them “morally corrupt.” He has always represented the extremist right wing of the conservatives.
Last year Bernier was the second last choice of almost half of Canada’s conservatives voting for a new party leader. That was not an impressive accomplishment. It meant that in a preferential ballot, he was among the 13 candidates in a count of 141,000 ballots cast. To further complicate the counting, all electoral districts were allocated up to 100 votes. Where more than 100 votes were obtained, the vote percentage applied. Who really won hardly matters as the ballots were destroyed after the count.
Preferential voting tends to drill down among the candidates. If you do not have a winner on the first count, you count the losing candidates’ second choice and so on until someone has more than 50 per cent. In this way, the losers get to choose the winners and usually nobody is happy.
Bernier was certainly not happy playing second fiddle to Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer. Their honeymoon only lasted a year while Bernier made plans. It was in this time that he came up with the idea of the peoples’ party. Which only proves that Maxime Bernier only has a vague idea of what it takes to launch a new political party.
He knows it takes money so he proudly announced that he had raised $140,000 to fund his party when he announced its name. Where he will get the $5 to 6 million required in just the coming year, he might not know. You would think if he checked with people such as Preston Manning of the former Reform Party or Lucien Bouchard of the Bloc Québécois, they would have told him the real needs. Bernier needs to get real.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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