FILE PHOTO – Newly elected Conservative leader Andrew Scheer (L) is congratulated by Conservative MP Maxime Bernier in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, May 29, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie
August 23, 2018
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s opposition Conservatives face a potential split a year ahead of national elections after a prominent former cabinet minister quit the party on Thursday to form his own right-leaning faction, focused on limited immigration and promoting free trade.
Maxime Bernier, who failed in his bid to lead the Conservative Party more than a year ago, said he hoped to have an alternative party up and running within weeks to challenge Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the 2019 election.
The Conservatives, who are neck and neck in polls with Trudeau’s Liberals, split into two factions in 1987, but reunified the party in 2003 and later held power for nearly a decade under former prime minister Stephen Harper.
Speaking out against “fake news” and saying the Conservatives under leader Andrew Scheer were “too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed,” Bernier announced his split at a news conference in Ottawa just as the party was gathering in Halifax for its annual convention.
“The Conservative party has abandoned conservatives. It does not represent them anymore. And it has nothing of substance to offer Canadians looking for a political alternative,” Bernier said.
“I want to do politics differently. I will find another way to give a voice to millions of Canadians,” he added.
Bernier is a second-generation politician and former foreign minister, a libertarian free-market champion who is also remembered for being dumped from Harper’s cabinet after leaving confidential documents at the house of a girlfriend with links to organized crime.
(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins, editing by G Crosse)
