Bernier, Fildebrandt and new parties could be influential

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on August 25, 2018.

The Conservative Party of Canada now has its own Derek Fildebrandt.

No, renegade Quebec MP Maxime Bernier hasn’t been caught renting out a government-subsidized residence on Airbnb, or been charged with failing to remain at the scene of an accident, or hunted illegally.

But in both cases, libertarian firebrands who were seen as potential leadership material have left their party to chart their own path.

The CPC and United Conservative Party both deny these departures are reflective of a broader disenchantment within each party.

In Bernier’s case at least, it’s clear that he has significant support within the party. Bernier was the frontrunner in last year’s leadership race ultimately won by Andrew Scheer. And until the 14th and final round of voting, Bernier was in the lead.

With a national and Alberta election coming up in 2019, neither conservative party wants to appear weak or divided, so the leadership naturally claims Bernier is a one-man-army.

Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner Conservative MP Glen Motz went as far to say that next year, voters will be asking themselves “Maxime Who?”

This underestimates Bernier’s appeal both within and without the party.

It’s understandable that there are hurt feelings among the Conservative party faithful, even among some of those who supported Bernier’s leadership bid, considering Bernier admitted Friday that he hadn’t consulted anyone in the party before making his announcement that he was leaving the “intellectually and morally corrupt” CPC on the eve of its final convention before the 2019 election.

But there is certainly a constituency in Canada, and Alberta in particular, for those who believe the Tories haven’t gone far enough in opposing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, especially among those whose primary news source is the alt-right-adjacent Rebel Media.

Bernier’s longstanding opposition to subsidies for Canadian dairy farmers and recent stream of tweets lashing out at Canada’s “cult of diversity” are red meat for this hard-right base.

Unsurprisingly, while Scheer, Motz, former prime minister Stephen Harper, UCP leader Jason Kenney and Calgary MP Michelle Rempel bashed Bernier’s decision, he was praised by Fildebrandt.

The Strathmore-Brooks MLA who backed Bernier’s leadership bid claimed a solid majority of Canadians agree with Bernier’s fears of “extreme multiculturalism.”

In characteristic fashion, Fildebrandt used the opportunity to promote his Freedom Conservative Party, which he says will be challenging the UCP in 2019, but only in ridings the NDP doesn’t stand a chance of winning.

Fildebrandt said that the FCP will fight the federal government to give Alberta more control over its immigration system.

Fildebrandt and Bernier were both criticized by their former party mates as egotistical opportunists who want the spotlight to themselves.

There’s certainly truth to this. Bernier wouldn’t have released a chapter of his now-shelved book calling many of Scheer’s supporters “fake conservatives” if he wasn’t trying to steal the spotlight from the CPC leader.

But perhaps Bernier and FIldebrandt are more politically shrewd than their former colleagues give them credit for.

If they can siphon off enough support from their former parties in the election, the CPC and UCP will almost certainly start adopting some of their policy positions, as the Liberals have done with the NDP since its inception.

We’ll have a better sense of this next year, when the FCP and Bernier’s yet-to-be-formed offshoot of the CPC run in their respective elections.

Bernier evoked French President Emmanuel Macron, whose startup En Marche party won a landslide victory in last year’s French election. However, Macron was a member of the wildly unpopular ruling Socialist Party before starting his own party.

He also had the advantage of his main opponent, Marine Le Pen, being in charge of a party founded by a Holocaust denier, who just so happened to be her father.

It’s quite likely that Bernier and Fildebrandt will win their own seats next year with their splinter parties. But their appeal outside their constituencies is still very much an open question.

Don’t expect to see Prime Minister Maxime Bernier or Premier Derek Fildebrandt any time soon, but they could end up being more influential than their critics suggest.