Maxime Bernier, People’s Party of Canada leader, calls COVID-19 lockdowns a "democratic failure," criticizing media, courts, and even the Conservatives for abandoning principles like the Great Barrington Declaration. His 2022 arrest in Manitoba—allegedly orchestrated by Premier Heather Stefanson—exposed political repression targeting unvaccinated dissenters. Bernier warns of Canada’s 2023 immigration surge (500,000 by 2025) straining housing and healthcare, while bills C-11, C-18, and the Online Harms Act threaten free speech, citing his own shadow-banning. He dismisses Pierre Poilievre’s leadership for ignoring inflation, Ukraine’s proxy war, and Quebec’s equalization dominance, but sees rising public rejection of overreach as a hopeful shift toward freedom. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a feature interview with Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People's Party of Canada.
What are his plans for 2023?
But before I get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's simply the video version of this podcast.
It's eight bucks a month.
And that money goes to paying the bills around here, supporting all our journalists.
You know, we don't take a dime from Trudeau, so we really rely on you.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe, you'll get the show and the satisfaction of helping to keep us strong.
Tonight, a feature conversation with the leader of the People's Party of Canada, Maxim Bernier.
It's January 11th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, you've heard me say it, that the pandemic and the lockdowns and the vaccine mandates was a total failure of the Democratic checks and balances.
I said every part of the system failed.
The media failed.
The colleges of physicians and surgeons failed.
The popular culture failed.
The law schools and law professors and the courts failed.
Our Charter of Rights failed.
And I also said that our parliaments failed.
Not only did all the parties act in lockstep, but the opposition parties did not oppose.
The conservatives were not very conservative, now were they?
Politicians Fail, Protests Emerge00:07:29
But there was one politician throughout who knew that freedom was at stake, and he was there on the streets protesting for freedom.
I believe he has been vindicated.
And what a pleasure it is to have a very special episode today with that man, Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People's Party.
Great to see you again.
Thank you, Ezra.
I'm very pleased to be with you.
Well, 2023 is an exciting year.
It's a promising year.
And I'm hoping that it'll be better than 2022, which started off as one of the darkest years in our country's history.
I mean, they literally brought in a kind of martial law.
They were seizing bank accounts of political opponents.
They were deploying riot police on horses.
The year started terribly, but it ended.
Well, the trucker convoy, I think, freed us all.
And you were there, weren't you?
Yes, I was there.
You know, when we created the People's Party of Canada, we base our party on four principles.
One of them is individual freedom and personal responsibility.
So when that happened in the beginning of that pandemic in March, April 2020, I was there and I said at that time, we must reopen the economy.
We must protect the most vulnerable in our society, like the Great Barlington Declaration.
And I was against the vaccine passport, vaccine mandates.
And I did, yes, some rallies across the country.
And I believe that we were able, we, the freedom fighters and Canadians across the country, to build a momentum.
And that's why when the Trudeau government decided to say to the truckers that they were not essential workers anymore and they will have to have the shots to be able to work, that was too much.
And with that momentum that we built together, that freedom convoy happened.
And it was great.
For me, it was not a protest.
It was a kind of a celebration of our freedoms.
And I was there.
It was cold, but it was fun.
And you're right, after that, the mandates in Saskatchewan, Alberta, these establishment politicians decided to lift these mandates.
And I think that was a very important point in our history, that Freedom Convoy.
Yeah.
Now, you were actually arrested during the lockdowns.
You were campaigning.
I think it was in Manitoba.
Manitoba, yeah.
And if I'm not mistaken, the Premier actually said, if you come here, you'll be a lighter in your wallet or something.
Like it was so bizarre to have politicians essentially directing the police to arrest rival politicians, and they did it.
And that's shocking to begin with, but the absolute delight and agreement by the other political parties and by the media was the scary part for me.
It's scary enough that the police were enforcers, but by that time they had been enforcing a lot of crazy rules.
But for a politician to essentially order you to be arrested, and then everyone say, yeah, we agree.
That's the scary part.
They said we agree, or they didn't say anything.
And then you were, I believe, if I remember that, the only one in Canada that decided to speak about it.
And with Tucker Carlson.
But yes, I was doing a tour across the country.
And when I came to Manitoba, the Premier said, I don't want you here.
You're not vaccinated.
You're not welcome.
And if you come, you know, he said something about we will empty your wallet or something, something like that.
And it was political repression.
I was arrested and cuffed and put in jail for a non-crime after a political guttering in a park fighting for freedom of choice.
And so, but we didn't have, like you said in the beginning, we didn't have any real opposition against these mandates at the provincial and at the federal level.
Not one party.
There was one or two rogue MPPs, like in Ontario, you had Randy Hillier and a few others, Roman Baber, but they were very quickly kicked out of their party, even kicked out of conservative parties.
Yeah, for me, and I know that now, you know, the conservative didn't do or they're not doing what is right for the country, but what is popular.
And at that time, it was not popular to speak against these mandates.
And they're doing poll and focus group.
And because of that propaganda coming from the government and all the mainstream media that were buying that narrative for mandates and things like that, it was not popular.
So the Conservative Party of Canada didn't say anything.
And that's why I'm always saying we are doing politics differently.
If it's popular or not, if it's politically correct or not, it's not important for us.
What is the most important, we have ideas, we are speaking about these ideas, and we believe that the more we speak about it, the more popular it will be.
I remember when Ron DeSantis of Florida really planted his flag, and the media reaction and the opposition reaction to him was hysterical and loud and extreme.
And I thought, if he can just hold it just for a few days and not wither, not bend the knee, he'll be fine.
And he stuck it out.
And not only was he fine, he became a role model and he became living proof.
And then he went on to become re-elected just a few months ago.
With a huge majority.
The largest majority of any Republican in Florida history, almost 20%.
And he did well amongst the Latino population, which is not normal for Republicans.
And I just think that that is what leadership is supposed to be.
And I wish that a conservative MP or the Conservative leader at the time, Aaron O'Toole, who wasn't very conservative, would have said, you know, this is the most important moment we've had in decades in Canada.
And I'm actually going to lead.
I think other people would have come, rallied around.
I think some academics would have had courage.
Some pundits would have had courage.
Maybe even some liberals would have said, yeah, you know, there's something to it.
But it was the forced unanimity that was so awful.
Not a single person stood up to the hurricane within the system.
You were sort of outside the system because you didn't have a seat.
No one who had a seat stood up other than a few in Ontario who were kicked out.
Yeah, but, you know, we, the People's Party, were and are the only political party that spoken against that.
And for dissentists, dissentists is a proof that when you have principles and you stick to your principles, you will win and you can win.
And, you know, the conservative didn't have any principles and didn't have any strong conviction.
So that was very disappointing.
And that's why, Ezra, in 2019, I said when I left the party, this party is morally and intellectually corrupt because they're only conservatives in name and that's it.
Why We Left The Party00:13:01
You know, it's interesting that the first two political casualties of the Trucker Convoy were not liberals, but were rather Aaron O'Toole and Jason Kenney, who obviously were not being true to their principles.
So we've talked about 2022 and I know you've talked about it a lot and it really was Rebel News' time to shine.
We covered that story in a manner that we had sort of been practicing for.
We didn't know it, but for the first five years of our life, we were practicing being contrarian, practicing being citizen journalists.
But it's 2023 now.
Yes.
The lockdowns are pretty much over.
There are a few attempts to have a vaccine mandate in some, I think there may be some parts of the Canadian government, I think even in the military, they might still have it.
And those are problems, but for 99.9% of Canadians, life has gone back to how it was before.
There's no mask laws that I know of.
But also for that, for the courageous Canadians who lost their job, they still have to be back and be fully compensated for that.
And that's not the case right now.
That's an excellent point.
Thank you for bringing that up.
And I know the New York Supreme Court threw out the vaccine mandates, ordered that everyone be rehired.
And they specifically said that the rationale for the vaccine mandates, that it stopped transmission, has been proven to be false.
So we do have a lot of work to do.
Thank you for bringing that up.
But what I was really driving at is where do you go now?
Where does the People's Party go now?
You had your time to shine, your important moment during the crisis.
And you personally paid a price.
You were arrested and jailed.
I was in jail for 12 hours.
Which is 12 hours more than you should have been in a free country.
So it's 2023.
What is the animating issue?
What are the projects that will take your time and your party's time?
What are your plans for 2023?
Yeah, if you look at our platform as a political party, you know, we have always the same platform and we won't change that platform.
I spoke about immigration in 2019 and that was not that popular.
I believe that this year in 2023, with the mass immigration, that's real.
When we'll have half a million people in 2025 in our country, when you have 38 million Canadians, that is mass immigration.
And I believe it would be an important issue.
And I'm pleased, I was reading in the National Post that some leftists now are saying, what about that number?
Half a million. people?
We must question that.
And so I did that in 2019 and I will do it because that is having an impact on housing on also our social services like healthcare.
So we must have sustainable immigration and we are the only national political party that is fighting for that.
You look at the conservative, the NDP, the Bloc Québecois, the Green, they're all for mass immigration.
They don't want anything because they're doing pandering.
They're pandering to some ethnic communities in our country to have their support.
We won't do that.
So I believe it will be an important issue this year.
Yeah, I mean, for housing, I mean, a lot of those immigrants go to Toronto, Montreal, and to an extent Montreal.
Sorry, Toronto, Vancouver, pardon me, and French-speaking ones often go to Montreal.
Yeah, 42% of them are going to Toronto and Vancouver.
So that's why it's putting pressure on the housing market.
And actually, Polyeb did an interview before Christmas, and he said, no, no, it's not about immigration.
It's about supply.
No, it's mathematical.
It's about immigration.
Too many people in a short time like that, that's create a crisis for housing.
It's a staggering number.
I don't know if there's any other country in the Western world that has that proportion.
That would be like, anyway, it's a huge number.
What are the other issues?
One of the things I'm alive to are censorship of the internet.
Trudeau has bill C-11, C-18.
He had a bill called C-36 he might bring back.
And then he had a fourth bill called the Online Harms Act that he hasn't introduced yet.
If I'm counting right, that's four different proposed laws to censor the internet.
It's more than he has on any other subject.
And I don't know if that will affect you, but it'll certainly affect us as online journalists.
What are your thoughts?
Have you looked at the legislation C11, C18?
Do you have thoughts on it?
Absolutely.
Speaking about censorship, you know, I was censored on social media last year on Twitter.
I was shadow banned there.
Now it's okay with the new owner of Twitter.
You know, you can have debates on Twitter.
But what they're doing, these radical leftists, they don't want to have any debates.
And so the only way to control the population is to censor and doing censorship like they're doing right now, you know, with Jordan Peterson.
All these regulatory bodies and authoritarian politicians don't want any debates.
And the only way, because we're going to win that debate with arguments, with reason, they don't want that.
So they try to censor us.
And with that bill and this bill in Ottawa, that's the case.
I'm very worried about that.
And I'm speaking against that all the time.
And everybody must be able to say what they want.
You have the right to insult me.
We are in a free country.
Let's enjoy that.
And the best one will win if you have both arguments, the left and the right.
And that was not the case during COVID-19.
You know, they shadow banned everybody that were not in line with the narrative.
And these bills are very dangerous for our democracy.
You know, just like there was silence when you were arrested in the lockdowns, there's so much silence about this censorship because so many of the media are in on it.
I think that 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, you would have seen a lot of journalists being against this.
But because so many of them are on the government media payroll, because so many news companies take huge handouts from the government, I think they're being tamed.
I think they're being colonized.
Like, I really, I could, there's maybe five voices in the mainstream media against it.
There would have been 50 or 500 10 years ago.
Yeah, but, you know, I don't call them the mainstream media anymore.
They're not mainstream.
Maybe the legacy media.
Right, right.
And the legacy media.
They call them the regime media sometimes because they're for the regime.
I don't know.
Sorry, I interrupted you.
Go ahead.
No, no.
But yeah, the mainstream media, they're not independent.
They're not like you.
You have to raise money, Ezra, to do your show.
I have to raise money to be a national political party and being able to speak about our ideas.
They don't have to do that.
They're receiving money from the government and all the advertising and propaganda that the government is giving them, all the money that the governments, not only the federal one, provincial governments are giving to them.
They're not independent and they want to keep that privilege.
And so you're right.
They are listening, their master, these establishment politicians, and they are promoting leftist ideology.
You mentioned Jordan Peterson.
I understand that's why you're in town today.
There was a protest in support of him.
Talk a little bit about him.
And you've been interviewed by him and the regular.
Yeah, absolutely.
What do you think of Jordan Peterson?
He's really, he started in Toronto with his own fights, but he's really become a global figure, hasn't he?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And, you know, it was at the last election I did an interview with him and a deep interview, about maybe one hour and 15 minutes, something like that.
I really appreciate it.
He was asking the tough questions.
And that was important for me to be there and to answer these questions.
And, you know, he's a leader.
He has a vision for his country.
And, you know, he wants to help us, Canadians, and other people to be successful.
And now what is happening to him?
You know, they try to silence him.
They don't want his voice out there because they cannot compete with that, with arguments, with reason.
And so, yes, I was here in Toronto this afternoon and we had a rally in support of Jordan Peterson, but also, Ezra, in support of all courageous Canadians that lost their job because of their convictions, because of their ideas.
And that is happening right now in Canada, in a free country that is supposed to be free.
So I don't like that.
It's very dangerous.
And, you know, I will always be there to support people who promote our Charter of Rights.
It'll be interesting to see if any mainstream or legacy media outlets cover the protests today.
We had a rebel news reporter down there, David Benzies, and I saw some of the footage.
It looked exciting.
There was lots of police presence.
It'll be interesting to see what the CBC or the Global Mail says.
No, if they were even there.
I was there.
I didn't see them.
They don't want to cover the other side of the story.
Like you.
Yeah, like you're doing.
But more and more people are listening to you, to the independent media.
And that's a good news.
So we'll see.
But I believe that they picked the wrong guy doing that fight against Jordan Peterson.
And I believe that will help the freedom movement because I believe that Mr. Peterson will fight and will sue them.
And because of that, the challenge that we have in Canada with our freedom, freedom of expression, now more people understand and more people know that this country is not free anymore.
Yeah.
Well, I think censorship is going to be a theme for 2023, I believe.
Oh, yeah.
Between the laws proposed by Trudeau and the Jordan Peterson example.
And I think that Elon Musk has revealed so much of the behind-the-scenes censorship government pressuring social media companies.
I think it's going to be the Twitter files.
Yeah, the Twitter files.
That you won't hear that in the legacy media.
Yeah, you know, I did.
I went to the CBC website and I typed in Twitter files.
And I did this a few weeks ago.
Maybe it's changed now.
But when I did it, they didn't even cover the story.
Our rebel viewers know about it.
It's Elon Musk revealing internal records.
So he's the boss.
He owns the records now.
He's revealing the bad behavior where government officials secretly pressured Twitter, and Twitter was happy to do it in many cases, to censor contrarian views, whether it was political views or health views.
I'd like to see the Canadian Twitter files.
I'd like to see if Trudeau or Gerald Butz or Catherine McKenna or Christia Freeland ordered Twitter to do any censorship.
And I know that there's some politicians or other prominent doctors that were shadow banned on Twitter during the COVID hysteria.
I was part of that.
And I want to know more details.
I hope we'll have the Canadian Twitter files.
Well, and I know that Elon Musk has been giving batches of records to different journalists, independent journalists, to do it.
And we've certainly let them know that we would love to have the Canadian files.
Now let's talk about the prospect of an election because there was an election in 2019.
Inflation and War Anxiety00:10:06
Election in 2021.
It seems like there might be an election in 2023, just in terms of timing.
I mean, 2023, if not, for sure, it'll be 2024, I would think.
And Pierre Polyev won the Conservative leadership with a large number on the first ballot.
I think most members of the party seem to be more excited about him than Aaron O'Toole.
His wife, Anayda Polyev, seems to be a strong candidate.
He seems to be talking stronger and more conservatively about everything from cancel culture to the CBC to monetary policy.
I think he's impressed the party base.
Those are issues that you used to own that used to be your comparative advantage to the Conservative Party of Canada.
How does the People's Party of Canada deal with a Conservative Party of Canada that is not perfect?
Don't think I think it's perfect.
But I believe that Pierre Polyev is better than Aaron O'Toole or Andrew Scheer.
I said, I said he's more intelligent than O'Toole for Shea.
And more principles.
And a better communicator.
So how does that work for you?
But we won't change, you know, because on the more on a lot of policies there's a lot of differences.
You mentioned immigration.
Yeah, immigration and you know I can speak about inflation.
You know what he said about inflation, I think he was right saying that it's because of a bad monetary policy.
But also we had a bad monetary policy and the Bank of Canada was the credit card for the federal government because the Trudeau government spend money that we don't have and the Bank of Canada printed all that money.
But Trudeau was able to do that because he had the support of the Conservative and Polyev.
They voted for all these COVID programs and that's why we have inflation.
So when he's speaking about inflation, you know, he was part of the creation of that inflation, that just inflation and it can be also a pier inflation because he voted for all these programs during COVID-19 and during COVID-19 he was okay with the lockdowns and all that.
And so the Bank of Canada printed all that money.
And the solution of that, and he doesn't have the right solution, is to say to the Bank of Canada, you must have a zero inflation target.
Like that, you won't be able to create money out of thin air.
We will preserve our purchasing power.
We will be richer.
He knows that inflation is because of printing money out of thin air, but he won't do anything about that.
He agrees with the 2% inflation target.
But Esra, 2% inflation every year since 2012, for the last 10 years, we had 25% inflation.
25%.
So 2% inflation is bad.
20% inflation is bad.
6% inflation is bad.
It must be 0%.
So there's a lot of subject and policies that we don't agree.
And I hope that he will be on our side.
I can speak about Ukraine, the war in Ukraine.
Polyev, the Greens, the Liberals, and everybody, they are all in for that war.
We are the only political party that is promoting peace and peacekeeping and peacemaking.
It's our history.
It's our culture as Canadians.
We must be sure to promote a diplomatic solution to that crisis.
So that's another big difference with Pierre Polyev.
And I can go on with the equalization.
You know, you have Western alienation and you have Western alienation because of the equalization formula.
Quebec received last year, I think it was $40 billion.
The equalization money, it's $24 billion.
It's all coming from Western Canada.
That's unfair.
We must change that.
Polyev won't speak about that.
He doesn't have the courage because if he's speaking about that, he may lose some vote in Quebec and in New Brunswick.
I'm speaking against that equalization formula.
I'm saying we must be less generous.
We must change the formula and we must have a new formula that would be fair for everybody.
And I'm saying that in French, in New Brunswick, in French in Quebec, because I know it is what we must do to keep that country united.
And I can speak about healthcare.
Polyev is okay with sending billion dollars to provinces on health care.
It won't solve anything.
We must change.
We have a bureaucratic, a socialist system.
And we must say to provinces, raise your own money for health care by giving them all the money that the federal government is receiving with the GST.
So they will have about $4 billion.
And Canadians will know who to blame for a lack of services in healthcare, for waiting time for surgeries.
Now, our Canadians don't know to blame.
Is it the federal government because it's not giving enough money to the province or the provincial government because they don't know how to manage a healthcare system and hospital?
So it's a provincial jurisdiction.
They must have the money without any conditions.
And you'll know who to blame.
It will be your provincial government.
But Polyev won't speak about that.
And so there's a lot of issues.
And that's why when the election will come, maybe it will be this year, maybe it would be next year or in 2025.
But I'll be on the stage to debate.
I was not on the stage at the last election.
They created a new rule because they didn't want me.
They said you need to have 4% of the vote.
We had 5%, so I'll be there.
And I'll be happy to debate with Pierre Polyev and Justin Trudeau about common sense policies.
You mentioned Ukraine there.
And I know that Canadians are really focused on our domestic situation.
There's a lot of problems we have to fix at home.
But Ukraine, which I don't think most Canadians were thinking about a year ago, is so it's such a high priority for the media and politicians.
And it seems like you absolutely have to be gung-ho for sending money and military equipment.
Like it's just, it feels like, I've just never seen such a mania for a war that feels far away from here.
And I mean, of course, I sympathize with a country that's being invaded.
And of course, I don't admire Putin, who is a KGB agent and he's an authoritarian ruler.
But I'm a little nervous about some of the warmongering language because at the end of the day, Russia is a nuclear power.
I find that whole thing uncomfortable.
But the crazy thing about it is if you say even a word about peace or caution, like not pro-Putin stuff, but just whoa, let's slow down here.
You're accused of being a Putin spy or something.
What's going on with that?
Yeah, that's the new narrative.
If you're for peace and prosperity, you are pro-Putin.
And, you know, that's the same thing that happened to us during COVID-19.
If you were against the mandates, you know, you are not a good Canadian and your story won't be in the mainstream media.
That's the same thing right now with that war in Ukraine.
It is not our war, but everybody, the mainstream media, all these establishment politicians, they are in that war with Ukraine and spending money that we don't have.
So let's fall in the Golden Globes last night.
How did that happen?
Four billion dollars.
The Canadian government just gave $4 billion.
The Liberals, the Conservatives, Polyev, everybody, they are, yeah, yeah, yeah, go.
Now, now it's a proxy war between U.S., NATO, and Russia.
That's what scares me.
That's the part that scares me.
And it's very dangerous.
It's very dangerous.
And, you know, we must look at the history and try to have a peaceful negotiation.
And I hope it will happen, but it's scary.
And again, there's the problem, and then there's the enforcement of only one view allowed.
And, you know, our viewers know that the University of Calgary, there's a professor there named Boucher who receives funding from Trudeau's Department of Defense.
And he did a study that claimed we were pro-Putin propagandists.
And you were on his hit list too.
It was such a junk science study.
And I thought, what is going on here?
One of the tests they had for being pro-Putin, they had five criteria.
One of them was, do you undermine trust in Justin Trudeau or the Liberal government?
Well, most Canadians don't trust Trudeau.
That doesn't mean they're all Putin agents.
It's very strange.
But on that, I just want to add, I did an interview in French with Journal de Montreal.
That's the biggest Francophone newspaper when that war started.
And, you know, because they thought that, you know, Bernie must be pro-Putin, the way that he's speaking.
So the journalist asked me a lot of questions.
And, you know, he wanted to prove to everybody that I'm pro-Putin.
And, you know, we did a nice interview about 25 minutes.
And I was answering questions.
And I had logical arguments telling them why I'm not supporting that war.
And they didn't print that.
They didn't print.
They didn't print it because it was not in line with the narrative.
And because I was looking good with nice argument that it's not our war, we don't have to be there.
Belief in Smaller Government00:02:14
Isn't that interesting?
Well, we've talked a lot about problems, which is what the job of an opposition politician is.
That's part of a healthy democracy.
Let's end on a positive note.
What do you think?
Is there a silver lining to the last few years?
Is there something positive that's come out of the pandemic and the lockdowns?
Is there something about 2023 that you find hopeful?
Oh, yes, yes.
You know, I'm traveling across the country and I can tell you that more and more people understand the challenges that we are having our country right now.
So, and more people are looking at leaders, not only politicians, for a solution.
And they're ready to look to a new alternative.
Like they're leaving a little bit the mainstream media and going to alternative media.
And in politics, they're doing that.
You know, Pierre Polyev is going up in the polls, and I'm going up in the poll also.
So something will happen.
And I believe in people.
I have faith in people.
And I believe that they have the ability to do what they want to do with their life.
And, you know, if you don't look at what your politician is doing or are doing, sorry, you won't be able to live in a free and a prosperous country.
So I believe that more people understand that a big fat government won't solve anything and they need to have more freedom and a smaller government.
And just for an example, for us, when we started the party in 2018 at 0%, our first election 1.6 and the last election 5%, I believe we will grow.
And we are able to influence the narrative, to move the public opinion.
And something will happen in this country.
It can be this year, it can be next year, but I believe the freedom fighters will win.
Right on.
Well, great to see you again.
And good luck in 2023.
We've been talking to Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People's Party in Canada.