Maxime Bernier Discloses the Elephant in the Room: The Leftist-Islamist coalition goes crazy

An organization sought to support Maxime Bernier and the People's Party of Canada by putting up billboards in support of Bernier's position against "mass" immigration. Bernier supports less immigration than does Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. One would think that such policy positions should be the subject of vigorous respectful debate - but not in "politically correct Canada.

The ads, featuring a photo of party leader Maxime Bernier, the slogan "Say NO to mass immigration" and a call to vote for his party, were criticized in social media and in mainstream media; but more importantly the totalitarian impulse in political correctness kept on until the owner of the billboards agreed to remove them. It seems that a full and honest debate on immigration is now to be censored by what I call the "Leftist-Islamist alliance.

For interested readers, the full PPC platform can be found at:  and I would recommend reading it.

How did we get to this place, where conservative opinion is now shunned in Canada? As someone who founded and runs Canada's sole conservative publishing house, Mantua Books, I have been up against this problem for some 15 years, dating back to when my pro-Israel novel was banned by Canada's largest book chain - see articles: how-i-became-a-banned-author-in-Canada

Torstar newspapers last summer ran a column by Emma Teitel dissing Conservative MP (as he then was) Maxime Bernier as "xenophobic" and ignorant of Canadian cultural traditions. The headline of her piece was: "Maxime Bernier's ill advised tweets on diversity simply don't make sense"

Her ire was raised by Bernier's attempts to find a limit to Justin Trudeau's oft-repeated goal for Canada of "inclusive diversity" through Bernier's advocacy of the idea that diversity is fine but "ever more diversity" threatens the Canadian way of life. To me, the concern about "ever more diversity" simply implies that we need to, at some point, limit what we do in the name of diversity, but to Teitel, this made no sense at all. For example, in the name of "diversity" should we have admitted Nazi groups into Canada in the early '40s?

Teitel, a young journalist (under 30) who identifies as a "progressive" and a lesbian, mocks Bernier's position that some immigrants refuse to integrate into Canadian society and values because they bring with them illiberal values. She claims that there are actually no existing Canadian cultural traditions. For Teitel, Canadian values are supposedly summed up in five words: "be nice and carry on".

When I was growing up in the pre-multicultural era, we were taught the values of "Peace, Order and Good Government" and that Christian symbols accorded with the "Judeo-Christian ethic" and that we were willing to fight, if necessary, to preserve Good over Evil. Now, appeasement is guaranteed by the belief that all cultures are equal, a truly stupid notion, if there ever was one.

Teitel suggests that as long as immigrants learn English, find work and cheer on our professional sports teams, then the "baggage" they might bring with them only means they take longer to warm up to ideas like same-sex marriage and gender equality.

Teitel, however, is hiding the elephant in the room - both in terms of what the threat is and how our supposed values will win out.

The elephant in the room, which she doesn't mention (except for her worry that Bernier's call for moderation in promoting diversity is somehow xenophobic) is the issue of immigration of those Muslims who are not coming here to participate in a liberal democracy but instead to change that liberal democracy to accord with the values of "Islamism". Islamism is the ideology based on a seventh-century unreformable (in their eyes) Islam. Islamists seek to conquer non-Muslim countries and create a world-wide Caliphate under the rigid illiberal Sharia Law, where women can be beaten, children can be "honour-killed" for bringing shame to their parents, girls are subject to genital mutilation, and it is in order to war against other religions like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and pursue genocide against peoples as diverse as the Turkish Armenians and the Yzedis of Iraq.

Canada has great anti-Islamist Muslim writers and activists like Raheel Reza from the reform group Muslims Facing Tomorrow, Toronto Sun columnist Farzana Hassan, author of the new book, The Case Against Jihad, and the great Emeritus Professor Salim Mansur of Western University in London, author of such books as Delectable Lie: a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism (now being released in French) and The Qur'an Problem and Islamism. (Both from Mantua Books.)

The best and brightest analyst of contemporary problems of Muslim terrorism and radical Islamism, Daniel Pipes of the Mideast Forum, bases his analysis (as does Mansur,now a candidate for Bernier's PPC party in London North) on the distinction between Islam and Islamism.

Recently, our media did their best to hide certain aspects of the background of Danforth Shooter Faisal Hussein, relating to his brother and his brother's friend owning 33 guns and having in their house some 42 kilos of carfentanil, enough to kill a hundred thousand Canadians.

And when Mr. Bernier dared to mention the elephant in the room, the Leftists and Islamists went on the attack seeking to have him removed from caucus and otherwise prevented from having his opinions heard. Bernier beat them all to the punch by announcing he is leaving the Conservative Party and starting his own party.

The fact is that Canadian values have never constituted, despite Teitel's opinion, to "be nice and carry on". Brave Canadian soldiers gave their lives to preserve liberty in the First and Second World Wars. They gave the ultimate sacrifice and Teitel reflects Trudeau's sad ideology of inclusive diversity. I ask: If Trudeau and Teitel, had had their jobs in 1943, would they have welcomed into Canada Nazi proponents of the Final Solution against the Jews, gays and others? Would we welcome Nazis into our "diversity"?

Teitel's work reflects moral and cultural relativism, the backbone of "political correctness". Cultural relativism holds that all cultures are equal and accordingly we should welcome any culture as immigrants. Proponents of the notions of Good and Evil, stemming from the Hebrew Bible, and being the basis of Judeo-Christian ethics deny that all cultures are equal. Cultures that encourage rape and murder are not the equal of those that embrace individual human rights.

It is very hard to set limits and Bernier should be praised for trying. Teitel should be pitied because in her thinking radical Islamists who hate and kill gays and lesbians do not warrant her concern as much as she fears Conservatives in Canada and Republicans in the U.S. Yet she is a self-identified lesbian herself!

Progressives who have power seem to like to ban books, censor politicians, and remove statues of our historic leaders, as a way of repudiating Historical discourse and becoming "thought police". Not very Canadian. I welcome Bernier's attempts to discuss important issues that may well affect our children and grandchildren more than us today. I welcome a new party which hopefully will see the elephant in the room and start a serious discussion of how to avoid the immigration to Canada of radical anti-liberal Islamists. This discussion must deal with what vetting of immigrants will be done. This discussion should involve a serious look at what has happened to Sweden, now with the second highest number of rapes per capita in the world. Then we must only allow in those who recognize the supremacy of traditional Canadian liberal democratic values over illiberal and extremist values brought by those whose own cultures are not the equal of our traditional liberal culture.

The leftist-Islamist alliance however believes that concerns about values and adherence to Canadian law are meant to obfuscate an international conspiracy by racist Islamaphobes, xenophobes, nativists and tools of Russian mischief. Such leftists apologists submit to Islamism.

In fact, the Leftist-Islamist alliance is less worried about Islamist Sharia Law, violent Jihad, and its goal of a world-wide caliphate, than it is of Russian foreign policy, and their continued belief that Trump somehow colluded with the Russians to the detriment of both America and Europe. Sadly, the new Left in America, advocating socialism,and an anti-Israelism that has passed into anti-Semitic delegitimization, demonization and double standards, and excessive tolerance of illiberal Islamists, denies the presence of Swedish "no-go zones" and instead blames Trump for the success of populist parties that have legitimate concerns about Islamism. Leftists either tolerate Islamists, as I have argued in my book, Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed or in fact they have submitted to Islamism and its leftist and globalist stooges, as I have written in my recent The Ideological Path to Sumission ... and what we can do about it.

All this is especially important due to Canada signing the problematic United Nations Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration without much debate or publicity. Yielding our sovereignty to international bodies that promote illiberal values, and support unrestricted Islamist migration to the West is something that our grandchildren will seriously question. Whether such a questioning will even be allowed to be heard (or whether it will be seen to be in breach of governmental diversity laws depends on us now electing politicians who, like Bernier, are willing to discuss the elephant in the room.

By Howard Rotberg

Howard Rotberg writes on political culture, values and ideologies. His two latest books are The Ideological Path to Submission... and what we can do about it and Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed. He is president of Canada's sole conservative publishing house, Mantua Books.