The Conservative Party and the renegade Bernier
- Details
- Thursday, 23 August 2018
- Marco La Grotta
On Aug. 23, former Tory MP Maxime Bernier delivered a prepared statement in Ottawa announcing his resignation from the Conservative Party of Canada and his intention to form a new party that “represents Conservative values”. In his statement, Bernier said his former party was “too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed,” and went on to denounce them for their support of corporate bailouts, retaliatory tariffs against the United States, “identity politics”, and supply management, among other things. Bernier also added that the election of Conservative leader Andrew Scheer as Prime Minister would be “a more disastrous form of the Liberal government”. As for the as-of-yet unnamed party, Bernier mentioned only that it will run in the 2019 federal election. The question on everyone’s lips is the same: what does this mean for Canadian politics?
It has been more than two years since the federal government rolled out Phoenix, the notorious payroll system that has failed to correctly pay more than half of the 300,000 workers in the federal public service. The Auditor General, in his spring reports to Parliament, described the system as “an incomprehensible failure”—words that will shock no one who works for the public service. Huge numbers of workers have complained of being overpaid or underpaid, and still more have gone completely unpaid for months at a time. Some are owed thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars in back pay. The “solution” that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have offered could take up to a decade to come into effect, leaving many of these workers stranded and with no way out.
Canadian big business has a friend in Justin Trudeau. At the end of June, it was revealed by CBC news via an Access to Information request that the Liberal government wrote off a loan to Canada’s auto industry in March. The exact amount of the loan and its recipients are unknown due to the heavy censorship of those documents which CBC obtained. However, it is highly suspected that GM and Chrysler were the two companies concerned, both of whom have amounts in arrears on commercial loans to the Canadian government to the tune of $1.15 billion as of March 2017. These loans, $1.3 billion for Chrysler and $220 million for GM, were given as part of the bailout of Canada’s auto sector after the financial collapse of 2009. In total, the Canadian government injected $13.7 billion into the auto sector at the time to keep it afloat.
There has been a recent increase in the number of people crossing the U.S.-Canadian border seeking asylum in Canada. Right-wing nationalists in Quebec and Conservatives in English Canada have been using this question in a disgusting manner to sow fear and division, claiming that the border is a “sieve” and that “we shouldn't have to pay” for the influx of refugees, etc. These very same people maintain the hypocritical stance of supporting corporate bailouts and cuts to public services while claiming that there is no money to help people fleeing the racist demagogue south of the border. They also conveniently ignore the dastardly role that Canadian imperialism played in destabilizing Haiti.
As federal and provincial governments prepare to spend $500 million on the celebration of Canada’s 150th “birthday”, Canadian workers continue to be forced to accept privatizations, falling living standards, and austerity.
On Friday 23rd June, Fightback’s editorial board sat down to discuss with 2017 NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton. Based upon that interview, and Ashton’s statements since the start of the campaign, Fightback has decided to support Ashton’s candidacy and encourage all socialists to do the same. 
On Friday June 23rd, the day after Niki Ashton gave what was generally considered a commanding performance at the 
On April 13th Trudeau’s Liberals tabled a bill in the House of Commons to legalize marijuana in Canada. Following their reversal on many key campaign promises, the Federal Liberals seem to be bending to pressure and are actually delivering on something! Legalization is undoubtedly popular among young people and nearly two thirds of the general population is supportive. But as they say, the devil is in the details and in typical Liberal fashion, there are some nasty little details.
Canadians have voted for change and rejected the austerity of the Harper Conservatives. However, Canada’s labour party, the New Democrats, did not capitalize on this anti-austerity mood. Under former Liberal Tom Mulcair, the party moved rightwards and adopted a tone of extreme moderation. This disillusioned the population looking for change and allowed the Justin Trudeau Liberals to fill the rhetorical vacuum on the left.
Canadian politics has been plagued by a debate about the niqab. Federal party leaders have been trading barbs over the issue in public statements as well as during the most recent French-language election debate. Plagued by the Senate corruption scandal and a sputtering economy, this niqab debate has arrived as a godsend for the Conservatives who seem to have gained new life in the polls. But what is this debate really about?