Do we like Maxime Bernier?
Our score: 1 out of 10. A long run of harmful words of his own on immigration and Indigenous history, plus a platform aimed at trans protections, with no real good found to set against it.
Bernier is Beauce, Quebec, political royalty: first elected as a Conservative in 2006 in the riding his father long held, then a cabinet minister under Stephen Harper. He came a close second to Andrew Scheer in the 2017 Conservative leadership race, then walked, calling his old party “too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed”. His new People's Party won no seats in 2019 and he lost his own riding, and he hasn't been back in Parliament since.
The immigration stuff is where the harm test bites. In 2018 he tweeted about “Radical multiculturalism” and pledged to abolish foreign aid and take Canada out of the Paris accord. In April 2025 he went on Tucker Carlson's show and said 97% of population growth was from mass immigration: “This is the replacement theory.” When Carlson said it was not a theory, Bernier answered “It's a reality.” That's a phrase most mainstream conservatives steer well clear of.
On trans people, the PPC's 2021 platform pledged to repeal Bill C-16, which put gender identity into federal human-rights law. It also promised to rework C-6 and keep women's sport closed to biological men. The party says adults can identify as they like and should enjoy the same rights as everyone else, and frames the rest as protecting women and kids. But taking gender identity out of the protections is still the heart of it. On COVID he opposed mask mandates, lockdowns and vaccine passports, saying people should choose for themselves, and his party's platform proposed dropping Paris climate targets.
In October 2025, on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Bernier reportedly posted that the residential schools “genocide” was a hoax. The Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador condemned it, called it a distortion of well-established historical facts, and demanded he retract it and apologise to survivors. A spokesperson for the group said the comments were “not only false — they are violent”. I couldn't find an apology.
On how he treats people: in 2021 he told followers to “write to these idiots” (reporters who had asked his party critical questions), and the Canadian Association of Journalists asked the RCMP to look into hate-filled online attacks on journalists that followed. The article I could open doesn't carry his reply. He also admitted two breaches of Manitoba's gathering limits from 2021 rallies, and a judge said he made a “deliberate and conscious decision to not respect the rule of law”. He was fined $2,000 and said he was “a victim of political repression”.
He also went to court to clear his name and lost. Bernier sued commentator Warren Kinsella for defamation over a campaign that accused him of racism, and in November 2021 Justice Calum MacLeod threw the suit out under Ontario's anti-SLAPP law. The judge said he wasn't deciding whether Bernier is racist, but called the posts a “drop of vitriol in a sea of criticism”. Separately, an affidavit filed in that case alleged he made derogatory remarks about Jagmeet Singh's turban and kirpan in 2018, and Bernier questioned that account.