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Maxime Bernier is a man with obvious political skills, some good ideas and more public appeal than the average backbench member of parliament, but suffers from a gaping hole where his judgment should be.

It’s a problem that’s been evident since he lost his job as foreign affairs minister after leaving secret cabinet documents at the home of his biker girlfriend. It took him years to work his way back into the party’s good graces after that episode, only to have things blow up again when he suggested that Andrew Scheer — the man who defeated him for the Conservative leadership — stacked the deck with “fake Conservatives” in his winning campaign.

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Now he’s at it again, embarrassing Scheer and plunging the party into unnecessary controversy, first by issuing remarks that smack of intolerance, then by launching a Twitter storm challenging Scheer’s response. A less cautious leader would have kicked Bernier’s butt halfway down Parliament Hill by now, inviting him to form his own party if he can’t learn to control himself within the Tory caucus. Yet Bernier seems incapable of grasping the damage he’s doing, both to himself and his party, by persisting in prolonging a mess he’s created all on his own.