SACPA: Maxime Bernier on the future of Canada and Alberta

Bernier said with the current Trudeau Liberal government, Canada is headed toward the “tyranny of a large enough minority to keep control of the levers of power”.

“Justin Trudeau has been acting exactly like some ‘banana republic’ dictator, even though he has a minority government. More and more democracy means whatever a government can get away with,” he stated.

“If a government adopts a policy that is approved, or not disapproved by enough people to get it elected or re-elected, than it is considered democracy, even if that policy contradicts the constitution, the rule of law, parliamentary precedent, the formal equality of all citizens and basic rights and freedoms.”

Bernier claimed Canada has a government with what he referred to as a “propaganda budget”, in order to “manipulate public opinion and manufacture the minimal democratic legitimacy that they need”.

“We are losing our basic rights and freedoms at a rapid pace. Our governments are becoming tyrannical. Identity politics is dividing us into warring tribes. The universalistic, classical liberal values that underpin Western civilisation are fast eroding, and we have competitors like China who have no use for these values. Their military and economic might are rapidly rising,” he said.

“I believe that confronting these trends is the biggest challenge of our time. I don’t think we can understand our national unity problems unless we put them in this larger perspective.”

Bernier remarked that within federation, the growth of government results in “the growth of all levels of government”.

“We have that in Canada, of course, provincial governments are bigger and more interventionist than ever, but it also means increasingly, the centralization in the national government, regardless of what the Constitution says about the division of powers,” he said during his presentation.

“The objective of the 1867 Act of our Constitution was not to subordinate provincial governments to a central authority, but rather to have sovereign provinces, within the limits of their powers dealing with local matters that directly affected their citizens, and a sovereign federal government, within the limits of its own powers dealing with matters of general, national interest.”

He said Ottawa took on more responsibility throughout the 20^th century.

“But, until the 1970s, we still had a relatively modest government, just like the United States. The centralizing trend accelerated under Pierre Trudeau… the 1970s and early 1980s were the era of big deficit and growing debt, the era of increased federal intervention in health care and education, the era of the National Energy Program, the era of centralization and nationalization. It was also the era when separatism became mainstream in both Quebec and Alberta,” Bernier said.

“In a large and diverse federation like Canada, the fastest way to breed resentment and disunity is to have a big central government intervening in provincial affairs, being perceived as favouring the interests of some regions against those of others or unfairly redistributing wealth from some regions to others. These structural problems are present in all federal unions.”

Maxime Bernier’s full presentation to the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs can be viewed below.

(Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs on YouTube)

by Justin Goulet

SACPA: Maxime Bernier on the future of Canada and Alberta

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