Maxime Bernier is not going to be prime minister after the 2019 election — I think we’re all fairly certain about that — but the big question in the wake of his selfish, hypocritical decision to quit the Conservative Party of Canada in favour of some other TBD political entity is whether or not he improves the odds of Justin Trudeau repeating his 2015 majority victory in 2019.
The conventional answer to that is yes: Bernier just gave a gift to Trudeau. The current Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer, said as much in a press conference Thursday in Halifax, where his party is holding its biannual policy convention this weekend.
The cherubic Scheer was always a long shot to beat Trudeau and the Liberals, but as Jason Lietaer, a veteran of election war rooms for conservative parties in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park told me on Twitter, Scheer had to have and has to have every single vote from every single living, breathing Conservative in the country if the Tories are to have any chance of success.
Even if The Bernier Party managed to divert just a small percentage of votes that would otherwise have gone to a Conservative candidate, seats that Scheer could have won will stay in the Liberal column, and the country will be governed by the Liberals for another four years — until 2023.
WATCH: Scheer turns page on Bernier drama at Conservative convention
Liberals in Nanaimo, BC, where Trudeau was meeting with his cabinet, or elsewhere did their best Thursday to avoid being seen popping the champagne corks. As for the blue team, there was the predictable rally-’round-the-leader from Scheer’s current and past caucus colleagues.
On Twitter, John Baird said he was standing 100 per cent behind “my party’s leader,” declaring that “Andrew will make an outstanding PM!”
And the PM that all three of them served, Stephen Harper, took to Twitter with his own swipe at Bernier and instructions for the masses.
“It is clear,” Harper wrote, “that Max never accepted the result of the leadership vote and seeks only to divide Conservatives. His decision today allows the Conservative Party of Canada to move forward united behind our Leader Andrew Scheer.”
WATCH: The ongoing challenge of uniting Conservative Canadians
(Yes, I know. Given what Harper did to sandbag Preston Manning, this is a bit rich, but still…)
And indeed, that is the ironic short-term effect of Bernier’s voluntary separation from the party that Bernier, just over a year ago, had fought so hard to lead.
WATCH: How the Liberals could benefit from Bernier quitting Conservatives
Bernier’s former caucus colleagues, all of them in Halifax, rallied around Scheer, and there is every opportunity for Scheer and the party to emerge from their weekend on the Atlantic Coast stronger and more united than when they arrived. Indeed, had Bernier stayed in the caucus and gone to Halifax, the meme all weekend and for the next several months would have been about division within Conservative ranks with sniping about how weak a leader Scheer is. But that cancer of division vacated the political body Thursday morning in Ottawa.
And though many Conservatives, like Lietaer or former Harper policy advisor Rachel Curran, thought Bernier had just handed the 2019 election to the Trudeau Liberals, I’m less inclined to call a TKO in favour of the incumbent installed at Rideau Cottage.
Consider: In the last fiscal quarter, the Conservative grassroots kicked in an all-time record cash haul to the party they love. Were all those millions donated despite Scheer or because of Scheer? I think, in fact, Scheer had nothing to do with it. More than any major party, the Conservative base has a very strong sense that each member has a special relationship to the party, even if they might be slightly down on the leader.
In any event, a record fundraising quarter is not, it seems to me, symptomatic of a restless grassroots looking around for a Conservative alternative led by Mad Max or anyone else.
WATCH: Maxime Bernier quits Conservatives; may form new party
Now it’s true that many grassroots Conservatives wish Scheer would do that or do this and why isn’t he raising his profile and how come he never visits my region and why is he trying to be ‘Trudeau-lite’? Yes, there is much room for improvement by the Leader of the Official Opposition.
Meanwhile, those same Scheer-doubters like the fact that Mad Max will stand up against political correctness and stick to a rigid conservative orthodoxy.
But does Max have any track record of actually doing that?
WATCH: Maxime Bernier says his opinions represent ‘real conservative ideas’
I called him a hypocrite in this piece’s opening paragraph because he sat at the cabinet table of a Conservative government that ruled for most of a decade, while one corporate bailout after another was approved. I tracked every penny of those handouts and Bernier never peeped up once in opposition as billions were handed out to Quebec businesses — from biggies like Bombardier to tiny start-up breweries.
The Global News “Ottawa Spends” database has Bernier handing out 29 federal government loans or grants worth a combined $5 million to businesses or organization in his riding of the Beauce during the Harper majority years of 2011-2015. What hypocrisy now for Bernier to declare himself an enemy of corporate welfare for the small businesses of the Beauce.
He was also at the cabinet table that, as far as we know, never once challenged the dairy cartel he now seeks to dismantle.
When the Harper government renewed the federal equalization formula — the same formula recently renewed by the Trudeau Liberals and which Bernier today criticized — why didn’t Max, five, six, or seven years ago, call us all to a Parliament Hill press conference room as he did today to declare that the party of Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer was so “intellectually and morally corrupt” that he felt forced to quit?
Bernier today told us he would build a new church on strict conservative and libertarian dogma. Where was his faith as he wandered in the Harper wilderness?
For all those — and there are legions — who love his ideas and support him, Bernier, when he had power, when he had a chance to move the dial for his true believers, he whiffed. He showed himself impotent at doing what must be done in politics, namely building coalitions, finding partners and getting stuff done.
“If he works as hard as he has in the Conservative party, we don’t have a lot to worry about,” Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel told a CPAC reporter in Halifax.
In contrast, Scheer eked out his leadership victory against the odds, precisely by building coalitions and getting stuff done. Example: When social conservative candidates — Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux — fell off the ballot, almost all their support went to Scheer, who has no interest in regulating marriage or outlawing a woman’s right to choose. Scheer, too, says a government he leads will not engage on either of those issues, but still, the word was out in the not-insignificant social conservative community that Scheer at least shared some similar values. Bernier has always been dismissive of such Conservatives and has a second-place showing in a 13-person leadership race to show for it.
Scheer now looks to his bench. In Quebec, he has Alain Rayes, Gerard Deltell and Pierre Paul-Hus, among others, who are effective communicators for the Conservatives in that province, and they have a by-election steal to show for it. In Ontario, former Scheer rivals Erin O’Toole and Lisa Raitt — recognizing, unlike Bernier, that politics is a team sport — are playing for their side with spirit and enthusiasm.
Bernier will no doubt soon arrive in Calgary where he is most popular, hoping to be embraced by the Albertans that he knows love his libertarian leanings. His hosts may pat him on the back and wish him well, but will remind him that conservative-minded voters in that province just decided to “unite the right,” provincially, because the results of their last bout of disunity resulted in the NDP government of Rachel Notley. “Love to help you, Max,” they might say, “but the result will be four more years of Justin Trudeau and we can’t have that, now can we?”
In British Columbia, those who vote federally for Conservatives know that if they abandon the free-enterprise coalition that is the BC Liberal Party, they get an NDP government in Victoria. And indeed, that is what they have. So when Bernier comes knocking on the doors of households that supported Ed Fast or Mark Strahl or Todd Doherty, he is almost certain to hear the same things Albertans will tell him: Now’s not the time, Max, to blow up the Conservative Party of Canada.
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