Maxime Bernier is challenging orthodoxy. He deserves a civil reply
Bernier's contention - that identity politics promotes an endless splintering of the polity into ever-narrower shards of cohorts, all of whom believe their ethnicity or religious beliefs or sexuality merit special consideration - is worth discussing. Dismissing Bernier as a nativist, or white nationalist, or simply racist is just more of the reflexive, ad hominem groupthink that's currently so fashionable.
There are people who believe, despite Trudeau's public declarations to the contrary, that there are core Canadian values worth preserving, and a core Canadian identity. Not necessarily the Judeo-Christian one I was taught in school, but also not one that can comfortably co-exist with some of the intolerant, deeply sexist cultural attitudes arriving with some in the legions of immigrants we welcome every year.
