Close to half of the Conservative party members who voted Saturday supported Bernier and his relatively moderate libertarian agenda of less government and lower taxes. The official count, based on the ballot-point system, was Andrew Scheer 17,221 points (50.95 per cent) versus Maxime Bernier 16,578 (49.05 per cent).
That’s close. But if accounts from the frontline are accurate, Bernier would have won the leadership were it not for vote-rigging infiltrators from the farmers’ unions and associated backers of supply management.
One source says that as many as 3,000 points went to Scheer, mostly in Quebec and Ontario, as a result of an organized campaign in which farmers temporarily joined the Conservative party and then cast votes against Bernier.
Bernier didn’t lose the leadership vote; it was stolen from him by a concerted campaign organized by members of Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) and farmers in Ontario. Via Facebook, Quebec farmers and others were urged to join the Conservative party and vote for Andrew Scheer.
Three Quebec ridings tell the story. One is Beauce, Bernier’s home riding. Right off the bat, in the opening round of the ranked ballot, Scheer collected 46.63 per cent of the points against 47.5 per cent for Bernier. By the end of the final round, Scheer was at 51 per cent versus 48 for Bernier — in a riding where Bernier is a local hero among Conservatives and hardly anyone would even know Scheer’s name.
Or take Saint-Hyacinthe–Bagot, a riding just south of Montreal. Scheer led from the first ballot with 61.4 per cent. Scheer ended the final ballot at almost 76 per cent. Is it a coincidence that Saint-Hyacinthe, Que. is home to a branch of the Institut de technologie agroalimentaire, a provincial agri-food training centre where professors and students would be heavily behind supply management? Also in the riding is an Agriculture Canada research centre, where supply management is embedded policy
In another farm riding — Lévis-Lotbinière — Scheer took 47 per cent on the first ballot against 32 per cent for Bernier. Scheer moved up to 54 per cent in the final ballot.
Again, in places where nobody knew his name, Andrew Scheer won the ballot contests.
Few of these ballot forms would have been filled out by loyal or longstanding Conservatives — or Conservatives of any kind. It is unlikely any have ever voted Conservative in the past. In these three crucial ridings, and others in Quebec, native son Maxime Bernier was defeated by fake Tories, drive-in drive-out party crashers whose sole motive was to defeat Bernier and uphold their supply-management racket.
The farm campaign was reportedly organized by a farmer via Facebook. He attracted thousands of followers and explicitly advised people to join the party and vote for Andrew Scheer.
The president of the UPA — the Quebec farmers union — claimed victory in an interview with Le Soleil. “There aren’t very many of us, agricultural producers, so the fact that we succeeded in mobilizing ourselves to affect the results in Quebec means that the number of Conservative Party members in Quebec is relatively small.”
