Canadian Politician Launches New Party to Pitch for New Immigration Rules

Former Conservative MP Maxime Bernier has launched the People’s Party of Canada with a promise to put Canadian interests first. The Quebec MP, who left his party last month, said that his new party will work on bringing new rules to determine which immigrants are allowed into Canada.

According to thestar.com, the name fits a party that represents people who are tired of Canadian politics being hijacked by special interest groups, cartels and lobbyists.

The portal said Bernier quit the Conservative party after spending much of the year arguing with Conservative leader Andrew Scheer over supply management. Scheer removed him from the Conservative shadow cabinet in June.

Canadian broadcaster CTV said Bernier wants supply management to go.

Bernier, who has been critical of Canada’s relaxed immigration and refugee rules, was criticized in August for a series of tweets which argued that “too much diversity” had eroded Canada’s identity and destroyed the values that makes it great and that immigration shouldn’t be open to those who don’t share Canadian values of freedom and equality, news portal Ottawa Citizen said.

Earlier this week, Bernier tweeted in response to a story about the surge in asylum seekers at the U.S.-Canada border. “If you can buy a plane ticket from Nigeria to NY, you’re not a real refugee. How long will this costly farce continue to destabilize our refugee system? The solution is to close the loophole in the treaty and immediately return these false refugees to the U.S.,” he said, according to Ottawa Citizen.

During the launch of his party on Sept. 14, Bernier said that while he supported immigration, he wants to look at the levels and wants people who come to Canada to have jobs and “share our Canadian values.”

He added that earlier this week he had spoken to Travis Patron, the leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party, who wants to ban burkas, deport asylum seekers, and lower immigration levels to 20,000-100,000 newcomers annually. Bernier said that he told him that those numbers were too low. He wanted those numbers to be decreased to 250,000 per year.

Bernier’s goal is to continue to promote free-market values, such as increased competition in the country’s agriculture sector and reduced equalization transfers to backward provinces, Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper reported. In addition, the report said, he wants to start debate on proper immigration levels to Canada.

“Forty-nine per cent of Canadians are saying that there is too much immigration in Canada … Some economists are saying something, the population is saying something. So, let’s open the debate. What will be our country 20 years from now?,” the publication quoted him as saying.

Bernier had called his former colleagues at the Conservative Party “intellectually and morally corrupt” before he quit party.

“When you want to please everybody, you won’t please everybody. That’s not my way of doing politics,” Ottawa Citizen quoted him as saying. “My party will respect taxpayers, the Constitution, respect regions, provinces, and territories equally, and respect Canada’s traditions without trying to forcibly change it like the current Liberal government is doing.”