Before its most recent incarnation, the Western Standard was nothing more than a Facebook page with 222 followers, reduced from its former glory as a national news magazine. Just a month after refounding, we’re closing in on a readership that rivals many major metropolitan papers. In May of 2017, I posted an article prior to the Conservative leadership race – which almost nobody read – on the old Western Standard Facebook page asking, “Where do the Conservative Party leadership candidates stand on marijuana legalization?”.The question mattered then and still matters now as by some accounts the Conservatives lost the last two elections because they were unable to pick up millennial votes, a large and growing constituency. While the vast majority of Canadians disagree with the Conservative opposition to even modest marijuana policy reforms, millennial voters have actually made this a ballot box issue in both Canada and the US..The short answer to this question is that none of the candidates in the Conservative leadership race were the least bit inclined to support meaningful marijuana policy reforms, except for Maxime Bernier, or so it was suggested..In 2015, Marc Emery, Canada’s leading marijuana legalization activist, rallied his supporters to vote for the Trudeau Liberals. In 2017, he shifted his support to Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier and then followed Bernier to the upstart People’s Party of Canada (PPC) in 2018.. 391E5952-D0AA-44E9-9A76-46F2462D4020Marc Emery (left) at 2017 CPC leadership convention (Photo credit: Matthew Johnston) .Bernier was quiet on marijuana legalization over the course of the leadership race, although he did signal his support for the idea in principle and said he was taking a wait-and-see attitude with respect to whatever legislation finally came before the House. When the bill did come before the House for a final vote in June of 2017, the only Conservative MP to vote in favour of it was Scott Reid. Reid got support for his dissenting vote in a Tweet from current Western Standard Publisher Derek Fildebrandt, then the lone Wildrose or PC MLA to openly support legalization.. Scott-Reid-tweetSource: Twitter .People like Marc Emery were prepared to give Bernier the benefit of the doubt on this vote and his overall silence on this issue. There is, after all, a lot wrong with Trudeau’s approach to marijuana legalization. But Bernier has still not publicly identified the weaknesses in the legalization framework or offered suggestions on how to improve it. .After Bernier left the CPC to start the PPC, libertarians who supported his leadership, and senior activists in the Libertarian Party, quickly joined. Their expectation was that, freed from the shackles of the CPC, Bernier would pursue a moderate libertarian agenda with a real chance of electing candidates. Part of this moderate libertarian agenda would be a bold position on marijuana legalization, or so was the expectation. But not only did marijuana legalization not become a campaign issue for the PPC, the party took a hard right turn that puzzled people who had followed Bernier’s career for over a decade..Adam Richardson, former Atlantic Canada organizer for the PPC, attempted to put marijuana policy reforms on the agenda during the height of media discussions over the enactment of Canada’s new marijuana laws. In an interview with the Western Standard, Richardson explained his thinking: “I thought support for cannabis legalization would differentiate Max from Andrew Scheer and appeal to young voters with little downside. Sure, many older conservative voters are not keen on cannabis legalization, but support for the status quo was very low, estimated at about 10% according to a Fraser Institute study. This was a very clear opportunity to appeal to average Canadian voters that let their vote swing based on issues… many who voted Conservative in the past but switch to Trudeau in 2015. A solid free market cannabis policy would have strong appeal to this large block of Canadian voters.”. Adam-on-pot-1Former PPC advisor Adam Richardson proposes marijuana policy .In an email exchange between Richardson and PPC senior advisor Martin Masse, released to the Western Standard, it is clear that neither Masse nor Bernier wanted to touch this issue.. Martin-Masse-Single-image-1PPC senior policy advisor Martin Masse says “wait” to marijuana policy proposal .For Richardson, opposition to marijuana policy reform, or an unwillingness to address the issue, was evidence enough that Bernier was not serious about redefining what it means to be a limited-government conservative in a socially progressive Canada. He told the Western Standard that “it was becoming clear to me that the messaging was not about a broad appeal to average Canadian voters, but rather to only take hard line positions that would draw from the traditional Conservative party base. I was not interested in being involved with a party whose main objective was just to cause another party to lose.” According to Richardson, there was no obvious strategy to build a mainstream, principled alternative to the CPC and the Liberal Party that might appeal to swing voters. He soon after resigned his volunteer position with the Party. Richardson has been a leading political organizer in Atlantic Canada since the days of the Reform Party and served as Atlantic Advisor to both Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day..Surprisingly, Marc Emery, who served most of a five year sentence in a US prison for selling marijuana seeds, is not particularly bothered by Bernier silence on marijuana policy reform. In an interview with the Western Standard, Emery said “Masse just told Max to stay away from drug policy.” He added that “I like that Max let each PPC candidate articulate their own view on drug policy. I advised many candidates and Max never interfered. I admire that.” Emery added that he remains committed to the PPC and would be willing to run as a candidate in the next federal election..Trevor Schmidt is less forgiving of the direction the PPC headed during the campaign and of Bernier’s betrayal of “libertarian-leaning policy ideas”. In an interview with the Western Standard, Schmidt said “A lot of libertarians like myself felt disenfranchised by Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives or didn’t see an opportunity for a break-through with the Libertarian Party and were attracted to Mad Max and the PPC.” Schmidt went on to say “I think libertarians grew disaffected by the PPC not just because the campaign messaging strayed from small government values, but because many people recognized the PPC had adopted a losing strategy.”.Schmidt was the Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of Canada and resigned before the federal election to join the PPC as a Calgary Electoral District Association coordinator. He laments the fact that the failure of the PPC to represent libertarian ideas means “Canadian libertarians of all stripes get to look forward to rebuilding their infrastructure again from the ground up, wherever they settle politically.”.Clinton Desveaux, former Executive Director of the PPC, says “the 28,000 members, who initially joined the PPC for free, now have expired memberships” and he is not convinced a sizeable portion will renew now that “the party has zero representation in the House of Commons.” Desveaux counts himself among the dissatisfied libertarians..If a commitment to drug policy reform is a litmus test for libertarianism, the PPC has failed to establish its libertarian bonafides — and is now shedding a small but valuable activist base. If the party survives going forward, it will do so only with the support of those who oppose high levels of immigration and what is called the globalist agenda, meaning interference by the United Nations in Canadian domestic affairs. This has left many pragmatic libertarians without a political home.
