Asked how his party would make housing affordable in the most multicultural city in the nation, Maxime Bernier offered a stark reply.

“Fewer immigrants,” he said. That, and lower taxes.

Speaking to the Star’s editorial board ahead of the Oct. 21 federal election on Tuesday morning, the leader of the People’s Party of Canada railed against multiculturalism, while defending against critics who claim his party courts white nationalist and racist supporters.

The People’s party is running against “official multiculturalism” and is calling for Canada to accept between 200,000 and 250,000 fewer immigrants each year.

“We don’t believe diversity is our strength,” Bernier said Tuesday.

“Shariah law is not part of our country,” he said, warning, without basis, of efforts to introduce Islamic law in Ontario. His party is against immigrant “ghettos” in Toronto, he said, warning that the sort of segregated communities seen in France might come here.

Ottawa plans to welcome more than 330,000 international migrants in 2019, aiming for more than half of those to be economic migrants and their families.

Speaking to Star’s editorial board, Bernier said while he wants Canada to accept far fewer immigrants, he is not against skilled migrants. “Let’s have more of them,” he said.

Bernier’s position on immigration is contrary to expert assessments that Canada needs more migrants to continue growing its economy in the face of the combination of a low birth rate and the looming retirement of millions of baby boomers.

“Immigration is key to Canada’s growth strategy,” a Conference Board of Canada report calling for the nation to welcome more immigrants said earlier this year.

Last month, Canada’s immigration system was praised in glowing terms by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for how it selects and retains foreign labour. According to the OECD, about 50 per cent of immigrants to Canada are highly educated; on the whole, immigrants are successfully integrating into the labour force.

Asked whether Canada can deal with the coming demographic change without immigration, University of Toronto professor Monica Boyd offered a succinct response — “No,” she said.

Asked whether Canada has a problem with suburban immigrant ghettos like those in France, Boyd, the Canada research chair in immigration, inequality and public policy, was similarly curt — “No,” she said. The segregated ghetto communities on the outskirts of French cities are the product of a particular time in the history of that country, she said.

Cities like Toronto are, of course, seeing waves of immigration, but other than the fact the newcomers are more likely to be visible minorities, the impact is not much different from the waves of Greek or Italian immigrants that came in the 20th century, she said.

So long as the nation offers upward mobility, the children of immigrants are “one of the biggest bonuses Canada gets,” she said.

Asked about a recent Global News report that the former leader of a U.S. neo-Nazi group was among the founding members of the People’s party, Bernier said this was old news, dealt with long ago. The People’s party expelled the man after learning of his past a month ago, he said.

The Global report also found a former member of the racist group Soldiers of Odin and an official in the far-right group Pegida Canada among signatories the People’s party submitted to Elections Canada last year as its founding members.

A Star investigation from earlier this year found three riding association executive members and a provincial organizer for the party had made hateful comments about immigrants, Muslims and other visible minorities. The four have since left the party.

Asked whether he can guarantee none of his party’s candidates have similar connections to white nationalist or racist groups, the leader said he could.

“Yeah,” he said, “all our candidates have been approved by the party.”

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Throughout the conversation, Bernier contrasted himself with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer, who in 2017 narrowly beat him for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.

The People’s party would not support a coalition with the Conservatives and will never merge with the party, he said.

The People’s party, he said, is the only option for voters who want a balanced budget, more pipelines, the end to protectionist regulations in Canada’s dairy industry, and lower equalization payments flowing to poorer provinces from wealthier ones.

On those issues, “Andrew Scheer and Justin Trudeau are all the same,” he said.

Last week, the Leaders’ Debates Commission invited Bernier to participate in federal leaders’ debates scheduled for Oct. 7 and Oct. 10.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh opposes Bernier’s inclusion in the debates, saying it is wrong to give a platform to promote an “ideology of hate.”

Bernier also made baseless claims about the science of global warming while defending himself against the label he is a climate-change denier.

Carbon dioxide is not pollution, it is “food for plants,” he said. He added that, while the climate may be changing, this is not due primarily to human activity and “there is no climate crisis.”

His position rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus that human-caused carbon emissions are behind rising temperatures.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the world must make deep cuts to its carbon emissions within the next 10 to 12 years to limit the most dangerous consequences of climate change, such as floods, droughts, extreme heatwaves and rising sea levels.

Bernier did concede it was a mistake to call 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg “mentally unstable” in a series of tweets earlier this month.

Thunberg, who slammed world leaders for failing to take meaningful action on climate change in a speech to the UN on Monday, has been vocal about the role her autism plays in her activism.

Ed Tubb is an assignment editor and a contributor to the Star’s coverage of the 2019 federal election. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @edtubb

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