Every day seems to bring with it another potential new candidate for the Conservative party leadership. Earlier this week the talk was all about Chris Alexander, boy-wonder ambassador turned flak-magnet immigration minister, throwing his hat in. Joining him in the batter’s circle this morning was Steven Blaney, former public safety minister and Stephen Harper’s point man on C-51.

It’s getting so that it’s hard to keep track. Before long, the Conservative race will start to look like the early days of the Republican presidential nomination race — when they needed an arena to hold all the candidates during the televized debates last winter.

Like the Republicans, the Conservatives haven’t been presenting us with a stellar cast of rivals. There’s Tony Clement, a Harper survivor who should have been hounded out of public life years ago over the G8 pork barrel scandal. There’s Kellie Leitch, who gave a lot of Canadians the creeps during the election campaign with her embrace of the “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line and is mining the same seam of irrational xenophobia now with her talk of “Canadian values”.

There’s Michael Chong, a sincere person with good ideas who seems to have little in common with his own party; he always has the air of someone who wandered into the wrong neighbourhood late at night. There’s Deepak Obhrai, one of the few Alberta MPs who actually looks good in a cowboy hat. There’s Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost, who seems to be trying to pry the alt-right vote away from Leitch with his weird claim that Ontario sex-ed curriculum is somehow comparable to the tragedy of the First Nations’ experience with residential schools.

And then there’s Maxime Bernier, the Quebec MP who, like Alexander, arrived in Ottawa trailing great expectations. Elected by a wide margin in 2006, he had name recognition in Quebec and a credible business background. He was quickly appointed industry minister and then promoted to the foreign affairs portfolio — before it all came crashing down after he left some sensitive documents at the home of a girlfriend with links to Quebec’s biker circles.

Throughout the ups and downs of his career, Bernier never hid the fact that, on economic policy, he belonged thoroughly to the Conservatives’ hard-right Libertarian tradition. The party’s vision of low taxes and small government was present during the Harper years but seldom expressed openly, reflecting Stephen Harper’s cautious approach to Canadians’ basic attachment to government services. Bernier remained an outspoken exception.

There’s not much detail on how the services Canadians want from government would be financed in future. But everything Bernier proposes is worth discussing, purely because the discussion itself could lead to new approaches to old problems. There’s not much detail on how the services Canadians want from government would be financed in future. But everything Bernier proposes is worth discussing, purely because the discussion itself could lead to new approaches to old problems.

You have to give the guy credit. He’s consistent and he doesn’t hesitate to attack the sacred cows of Canadian economic life — policies that, in many cases, have passed their best-before date and are overdue for major reform, if not outright abolition.

Take supply management. It’s becoming increasingly untenable for Canada to promote free trade and then impose usurious tariffs to make sure that foreign ice cream never passes Canadian lips. Our trade partners are justifiably outraged, and consumers should be as well — yet every Canadian politician, right and left, defends the farmers’ cartel, petrified by their political clout.

Not Bernier. Even though he’s got plenty of dairy farmers in his riding of Beauce, he boldly states that “this system is fundamentally unjust for Canadian families. Defenders of supply management say that it provides price stability to farmers, but on the other side of the coin, it’s a system that doesn’t adapt to changes in demand and it discourages innovation and productivity.”

He suggests a transition period of five to 10 years and an eventual end to supply management. Not an unreasonable idea. Why can’t urban MPs, who owe nothing to quota-rich dairy farmers, show enough backbone to stand up for consumers and at least talk about reform?

Bernier wants Canada Post’s monopoly on first-class mail ended and the corporation itself privatized — not necessarily a realistic solution but definitely a valid option. On inter-provincial trade, he wants all the barriers taken down. He also thinks it’s time for an overhaul of our model of airport administration, which saw Ottawa transfer ownership of the facilities to local authorities but saddle them with continued rental payments that lead to higher costs, inevitably passed on to consumers. He wants to get rid of ownership rules for domestic airlines to promote competition and lower fares.

His most controversial positions are surely on taxation: a further cut in the federal corporate income tax rate, to 10 per cent, and an end to capital gains taxes. Classic far-right economics with no price tag attached. And not much detail on how the services Canadians want from government would be financed in future.

But everything Bernier proposes is worth discussing, purely because the discussion itself could lead to new approaches to old problems. Bernier probably doesn’t have a chance of winning. His caucus support is thin and it’s unlikely the Conservatives of 2016 are really interested in a leader from Quebec.

But given that the Conservatives are going to have plenty of time in opposition to mull things over, why not talk about the economy? Surely that’s less destructive — for the party and the country — than another shabby attempt to mine anti-immigrant paranoia for votes.

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