A A

With the next federal election still months away, Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada is getting a head start on its campaign.

The former Quebec Conservative MP and leadership contender stunned Canadians last year when he announced he was quitting the party and forming his own.

Four months later, following a Western Canada tour before Christmas, Bernier is kicking off his party’s Atlantic Canada campaign. He had two stops in New Brunswick on Thursday — an afternoon appearance at the Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce and an evening rally — and has a rally planned at the Atlantica Hotel in Halifax on Friday night.

During an interview on Thursday, Bernier insisted his party will have candidates in the 32 ridings in the Atlantic region, all of which are held by the Liberals.

The party has riding associations set up in all 338 ridings in Canada and Bernier said they’re just waiting for the stamp of approval from Elections Canada to get nominations underway.

“The goal is to have candidates in every riding before the end of May,” he said.

Bernier said there are already several people interested in becoming candidates in Nova Scotia. He plans to meet with them on Friday.

In the meantime, the once Harper-era cabinet minister is attempting to woo voters in the region using the party’s platform and values.

“Individual freedom, personal responsibility, respect on fairness, all our policies are based on these four principles,” he said.

Speaking to members of the Saint John chamber on Thursday, much of Bernier’s speech focused on how his party would invoke the Constitution in order to assert federal jurisdiction to prevent efforts to block Energy East, a national project he says other provinces and municipalities or Indigenous governments do not have the right to block.

Bernier also spoke of his party’s plan to cut equalization payments to force provinces to develop their natural resources.

“Canadians who live in the West, in provinces that never get any equalization payments, believe that the program is unfair to them. They have a point,” Bernier said.

“But I would argue that it is also unfair for the citizens of provinces that have been on the receiving end for decades: Manitoba, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I.”

Bernier said there is a myth that equalization is helpful, but instead weakens the private sector and encourages recipient provinces to keep taxes high, preventing them from developing to their full potential.

When it comes to health-care funding transfers, Bernier also wants to see those go. Instead of giving money to the provinces directly Bernier wants to lower the personal income tax rate and give provinces and territories the option to raise taxes to pay for their own health care.

“People don’t know who to blame,” he said. “Is it the provincial government because they are not able to manage health care delivery or the federal government because they don’t give enough money to a province.”

Instead, he said, handing the whole responsibility of healthcare delivery to the provinces will hold leaders accountable and provide incentive to deliver the services.

Bernier said attendees at the Halifax rally, where he said 450 had registered as of Thursday afternoon, can expect similar messaging on equalization payments, pipelines, and free trade.

Though there has been much focus on Bernier’s vehemently anti-supply management platform, it’s notably absent in his campaign messaging on his East Coast tour, so too is his controversial platform on immigration.

Between his Twitter rants decrying the Trudeau government’s policy of “extreme multiculturalism” and “cult of diversity” over the summer, Bernier’s opponents have been quick to brand him as anti-immigration, something Bernier said he disagrees with.

“This country has been built by immigrants, we’re proud of that,” he said. “People who don’t believe in immigration they’re not welcome in our party and people who believe in less immigration they are also not welcome in our party.”

At the same time, Bernier’s platform does call for fewer newcomers by reducing the number of immigrants from 300,000 a year under the Liberal government back to 250,000. Bernier said he would like to see fewer refugees and immigrants through family reunification programs and more economic immigrants.

He also said he would be open to reducing quota from provinces like Quebec who want fewer newcomers and upping the limit for provinces like Nova Scotia that have expressed a need for more immigrants.

Bernier’s pro-gun, small government, anti-carbon tax and immigration-weary platform has led pundits and experts to position the People’s Party of Canada as a far-right party with libertarian and populist leanings.

Despite Atlantic Canada’s reputation as being more centre-leaning and a hot spot for so-called red-Toryism, Bernier said he’s confident his message will resonate in the region. He believes his platform will resonate with “true” conservatives and Martin and Chretien-era Liberals who want a balanced budget and lower taxes, as well as the “30 per cent of the population in Canada that didn’t vote in the last election (and) are fed up with the traditional politicians”

“You call me a populist politician, I don’t have any problem with that but call me a smart populist politician because we have serious policies and we are speaking to the intelligence of Canadians,” Bernier said.

“We are not trying to speak to the emotions of Canadians. We’re saying to Canadians, if you like that I hope you vote for us, if you don’t like out platform you have other choices.”