Is Maxime Bernier trying to become the Sarah Palin of the Conservative Party? He did two cowardly things this week, one major, one minor, while trying to dismember leader Andrew Scheer and split the party ahead of an upcoming convention.

First, the Quebec MP tried to draw his fellow Conservatives into an ugly fight involving race that both sides will lose, as the Canadian electorate would make clear in a federal election.

And second, he did it on Twitter, that mire of blood, soil, bullies, Russian hackers, anonymous venomists and other dubious matter. If Bernier is intent on making a fool of himself, he should stand up and say aloud, “I dislike people who don’t look and talk like me.”

Palin did this in 2008, saying foul things that Republicans had never before dared to say out loud, and she split the party. As Obama aide Ben Rhodes writes in his new book, The World As It Is, “As much as she became a punchline, Palin’s ascendance broke a seal on a Pandora’s box: The innuendo and conspiracy theories that existed in forwarded emails and fringe right-wing websites now had a mainstream voice, and the trend would only grow.”

I always thought Jason Kenney was the Palin of Canada. Instead, will Bernier’s race provocations go viral as Palin’s did and eventually push out rational Conservatives?

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Opinion | Systemic racism in Canada is real, folks

Conservative MP Maxime Bernier criticizes Trudeau for promoting too much diversity

Bernier may be testing the waters. He may make a Palin-type speech blaming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for “too much diversity,” with “extreme multiculturalism and (a) cult of diversity” dividing Canada into “little tribes,” presumably ethnic. “Where do we draw the line?” Bernier tweeted.

Bernier says he doesn’t like identity politics. Neither do I. But he is talking more about ethnicity, which I try not to do, and in this he is copying Donald Trump. He says Canadian politicians are appealing to “specific groups on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, language, sexuality or other characteristics.”

Ethnicity is a particularly crude American obsession in this violent era. Why would Bernier want it here in Canada? Bernier is sensitive about this. “I am doing the OPPOSITE of identity politics,” he tweeted later, complaining he was being misunderstood. No, he is celebrating his own tribe when he should be uniting this fractious nation facing fire, flood and a Trump growing madder by the day.

Bernier is from Quebec, home of identity politics based on history and language. When he says ethnicity and religion, he’s referring to Muslims, Jews, most immigrants, people with English as a second language, and so on. He appears to leave out women because they’re half the voting population but also because he knows he won’t win by attacking women, not these days.

“Berniers,” or “men of pale” — I always feel awkward about labelling people by skin colour — are an identity group too, albeit Quebecois this time, and the one that will cling to power for generations to come. Bernier thinks the Berniers are the foundation of Canada, the core group, the factory setting.

My feminism includes men, in particular, a British-Canadian husband of whom I am beyond fond. Like Trudeau, I believe that men and women must work together for women’s equality. But I don’t wish women of pale to hitch themselves to Bernier’s wagon if that excludes smaller groups — women of beige, women of charcoal — who are more or less shut out of power.

Bernier does the usual thing. He conflates a minor matter — a Confederation statue in Victoria, a Winnipeg park named after a Pakistani leader — with a major problem, which is holding this huge country together, province by province, citizen by citizen. (As I write, I receive yet another anonymous email about another Winnipeg park with an “offensive” foreign name. Thanks, Maxime.)

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Bernier uses a lot of shorthand. The Berniers, like the Obama-hating Palins, pin their anger on one man, Trudeau, although his is not a one-man government the way Stephen Harper’s was. He is their statue, their local park.

CBC political analyst Eric Grenier says Bernier’s base — he call them his “Mad Max Club” — may not be the force he thinks it is. There are always racists, whether full-time or part-time, but never so many that they can win you elections. Part-time racists can be incandescent on single issues but reasonable on others.

Take the U.S. border crossers. A petition against them presented at Markham's city hall by mayoral candidate Shan Hua Lu called them “Nigerians.” That’s not good. Border Security Minister Bill Blair said he’d have to do a better job of explaining the asylum process to Canadians.

Yes, he does. He and strangely quiet Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen should reveal how many and how quickly asylum claims are processed, and how failed applicants are deported. Ottawa has to reassure Canadians that rejected claimants do indeed leave. Facts matter.

If this works, the issue will die off. It would shrink Bernier’s set of ethnic complaints, and therefore his Mad Maxers and Berniers. He’ll have nothing left but his political persona. It’s very much like Palin’s: dim, mean, foolish and destructive.

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