Gilles Bernier (born July 15, 1934) is a former Canadian politician and diplomat. He was the Member of Parliament representing the riding of Beauce from 1984 to 1997, initially as a Progressive Conservative and later as an Independent.

Lawyer and politician who served as a cabinet minister of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and as Member of Parliament (MP) for Beauce from 2006 to 2019

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A Very Canadian Coup

The top 10 ways that Canada aided the 2004 coup in Haiti and helped subject Haitians to a brutal reign of terror

Gilles Bernier served as Canada 's ambassador to Haiti from 1997 to 2001.

hings went from bad to worse after Canada's Liberal government helped plan and carry out the 2004 regime change in Haiti that illegally ousted President Aristide's democratically-elected government. Canada then helped empower and entrench an illegal coup-installed puppet regime that launched a reign of terror in which thousands of pro-democracy supporters were executed, jailed without charge, driven into hiding, or exiled.

This Canadian-financed dictatorship, propped up by UN-sanctioned occupation forces, was applauded by corporations greedy to profit from "reconstruction" contracts, the privatization of public services, and the wage-slavery of Haitian sweatshops.

Canada has a lot to answer for. Here are 10 ways in which our government contributed to this major violation of human rights in Haiti:

1. Creating the coup's ideological pretext

The world's most powerful states justify their “right” to invade, overthrow, and occupy weaker nations with euphemistic platitudes. They rationalize their role in various theatres of war, invoking the need for "humanitarian interventions" against “failed states.”

The “Responsibility-to-Protect” (R2P) doctrine -- an ideological pretext that was created and developed by Canada's federal government -- was used to legitimize the illegal coup imposed on Haiti in 2004.

Institutionalized on the world stage by a Canadian front called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), the R2P doctrine was the brainchild of then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. When announcing its birth in 2000, then-Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy thanked the “Carnegie, MacArthur, and Rockefeller Foundations” for “strong political and financial support.”

With Axworthy acting as chair of the board, ICISS offices were ensconced in Ottawa’s Foreign Affairs Department. Canada chose both ICISS co-chairs and appointed such "Big L" Liberals as Michael Ignatieff, a long-time U.S. resident and supporter of then-President George W.Bush, "missile defense," the Iraq war, and torture.

The R2P script spells out acceptable excuses for violating the UN’s two primary principles: state sovereignty and military non-intervention.

In May 2004, after ousting Haiti’s democratically-elected government, then-Prime Minister Paul Martin summarized a fundamental R2P principle: “Failed states, more often than not, require military intervention in order to ensure stability.” Asking himself, “Why is it up to Canada to be the catalyst?” he answered, “We inspire confidence... because we are neither a former colonial power nor a superpower.”

Canada's political/economic/military allies in Washington and London needed a champion for the starring role in R2P. Already typecast as honest broker and heroic peacekeeper, Canada was perfect for the part.

2. Initiating the planning process

Canada's Liberal government was instrumental in gathering together an exclusive coterie of international players to lay the foundation for Haiti's coup.

Their first meeting, the so-called “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” (January 31 - February 1, 2003), was held at the federal government's conference centre on Meech Lake near Canada's capital.

We now know, thanks to Access to Information, that this confab on “the current political situation in Haiti” was “envisaged to be of a restricted and intimate nature... in order to facilitate a free exchange of views and brainstorming among the invited participants.”

Those invited to this "free exchange" did not include a single Haitian, not even from the wealthy corporate élite that was so instrumental in facilitating the coup. Besides El Salvador's Foreign Minister, participants were exclusively from North America and Europe. They were also homogenous in their opposition to Haiti's President Aristide and in support of replacing him with an imposed occupation government.

The meeting's host was Denis Paradis, a Quebec Liberal MP who was Chrétien's Secretary of State for Latin America, Africa, and the Francophonie. Canada's future Foreign Affairs Minister, Pierre Pettigrew, was also there, as were two U.S. State Department officials, Mary Ellen Gilroy and Otto Reich -- a long-time coup plotter, propagandist, and veteran of the Contragate scandal. Also on hand were the U.S. representative to the Organization of American States, France's Minister for Security and Conflict Prevention, and the Francophonie's Administrator General.

"The Ottawa Initiative" was presumably supposed to remain secret, but in March 2003, Paradis leaked some details to journalist Michel Vastel, who wrote about it in L’Actualité (March 15, 2003).

The purpose of Canada's initial meeting appears to have been to build a working consensus among influential players from the key states striving for regime change in Haiti, primarily, the U.S., Canada, and France. They agreed -- in general terms -- on the goal of ridding themselves of Aristide before his five-year mandate expired, and on using their troops to supplant Haiti's elected government with a new regime.

Vastel's account had few details on the military invasion/occupation, noting only that “No decision has yet been taken, but, in French diplomatic circles, they say that there has been talk of a sort of guardianship‚ as in Kosovo... Even if the UN doesn’t want this kind of intervention leading to military occupation, this might be inevitable until elections are organized.”

Participants wanted the new regime in place before the powerfully symbolic bicentennial of Haiti’s revolution, when a slave revolt defeated France's Napoleonic forces. This objective was soon echoed by Chrétien who, in April 2003, “declared that the ‘international community’ should not have to wake up with Aristide in power on January 1, 2004, Haiti’s bicentennial.” With "The Ottawa Initiative" groundwork firmly in place, Aristide was ousted by the end of February 2004.

3. Providing troops and equipment

Canada's military played a significant role in deposing Haiti’s democracy and protecting the ensuing dictatorship. In the early hours of February 29, 2004, U.S. officials entered President Aristide's home, threatening a "bloodbath" if he did not leave the country. After being forced to sign a “letter of resignation,” he was taken by heavily-armed Marines to the airport, which Canadian commandos had just “secured.”

Aristide later said: “The coup and kidnapping was led by the U.S., France, and Canada. [They] were on the front lines by sending their soldiers to Haiti before February 29, by having their soldiers either at the airport or at my residence, or around the palace, or in the capital to make sure that they succeeded in kidnapping me, leading [to] the coup.”

Canada sent “a team of JTF2 [Joint Task Force 2] commandos to Haiti four days before the coup” (American Forces Press Service, March 14, 2004). They “took control of the Port-au-Prince airport on... February 29, 2004... About 30 Canadian special forces soldiers secured the airport and two sharpshooters [were] positioned on top of the control tower.” (AFP, March 2, 2004.)

Canadian Forces (CF) also “secured key locations" in the capital. (Anthony Fenton, The Dominion, April 22, 2006). According to a government video, CF “provided extensive support” during the preceding week: “More than 100 CF personnel and four CC-130 Hercules aircraft... assist[ed] with emergency contingency plans and security measures.” (“Operation PRINCIPAL,” February 28, 2004.)

Immediately after the coup, 500 Canadian troops joined U.S. and French forces in protecting Haiti's newly-empowered, illegal regime and suppressing Aristide supporters.

However, the Canadian Air Force website said Canadian troops “helped restore peace and democracy in Haiti following that country’s democratic elections.” In reality, the “democratic elections” — which swept Aristide to power — occurred in 2000, and Canada's troops helped overthrow democracy, not restore it.

The claim that Canadian troops “helped restore peace” is equally ludicrous. During the coup's two-year reign of terror, thousands were murdered with impunity by Haitian police, its disbanded military and death squads, as foreign troops stood by, providing cover.

Canada is also a major supporter of the UN forces that took over the occupation in 2004 and have killed many civilians during numerous, heavily-armed raids into Haiti's poorest neighbourhoods. Unperturbed, Canada has pushed for the use of even more excessive force by UN troops.

4. Funding, training and commanding the police

In 1995, Aristide disbanded Haiti's military because of its role in coups, dictatorships, mass murder, and torture. With Aristide's 2004 ouster, Haiti's U.S.-trained ex-military were placed in all Haitian National Police (HNP) leadership positions, including police-abuse investigations. Through Haiti's UN Police Mission (UNPOL), the RCMP has funded and led the HNP's training, supervision, and oversight.

The RCMP's David Beer -- transferred from teaching counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq -- became UNPOL's first chief. Another RCMP officer, Graham Muir, was next to command UNPOL's 1,600 officers (including 125 RCMP and Quebec police). Although admitting HNP's responsibility for murder, Muir blamed it on “rogue elements.”

Lawyer Brian Concannon, with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, said RCMP-led UNPOL shared responsibility for HNP rampages: “[M]any of these rogue [HNP] elements were intentionally integrated into the force, without public objection from MINUSTAH or UNPOL.... [I]n 2004, Gen. Abraham [Haiti’s retired military leader] started integrating former soldiers into the force, bypassing regulations for police recruitment and promotion... Several times, MINUSTAH, including UNPOL officers, watched as the HNP shot into peaceful demonstrations.”

In its 2005 Human Rights Investigation, the University of Miami Law School published interviews with brave HNP officers, fearing for their lives, who described raids into poor pro-Aristide neighbourhoods, when HNP commanders ordered the murder of suspects and witnesses. Coup-appointed Police Chief Leon Charles also ordered the violent suppression of peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrations.

Amnesty International has exposed HNP's summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture, and rape. Similarly, the International Catholic Institute said that "many" HNP officers engaged in "drug rackets, kidnappings [and] extra-judicial killings.”

When the HNP killed nine Aristide supporters, the HNP said they "were not shot during a demonstration since... authorities had received no notice of a demonstration." The UN Civilian Police spokesperson, the RCMP's Dan Moskaluk, called it an "illegal demonstration," and refused to comment on HNP's authority to execute protesters.

When HNP received a million rounds of ammunition, and 10,000 U.S. military-style handguns and weapons, Moskaluk defended the transfer. Human rights groups denounced it, saying HNP would distribute weapons to death squads for joint operations conducted under UN supervision.

In 2006, an "International Tribunal" led by former-U.S. Attorney-General Ramsay Clark found the RCMP's Beer and Muir guilty of crimes against humanity -- but to no avail. HNP and their RCMP handlers have continued to operate with complete impunity.

5. Every trick in the diplomatic book

Canada used every conceivable diplomatic trick to bring down Aristide's elected government and then legitimize the coup-installed regime.

On February 5, 2004 -- while a murderous band of ex-military and death-squad leaders launched a campaign attacking Haitian government facilities, police stations, and health clinics -- Liberal cabinet minister Pierre Pettigrew met with Paul Arcelin. Described as the terrorists’ “political mastermind” and “spokesman," Arcelin also served as a diplomatic representative in Canada.

At the UN Security Council on February 26, Canadian, U.S., and French diplomats dismissed Caribbean Community (CARICOM) calls for a multinational force to protect Aristide's elected government from a coup. Although Jamaica’s Foreign Minister warned that “Immediate action is needed to safeguard democracy [and] to avert bloodshed,” U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham told Aristide he had to resign.

Canada, the U.S., and France immediately recognized the illegal coup regime, but CARICOM's 15 member states, Venezuela, and the African Union's 53 governments all refused to grant diplomatic recognition and demanded an investigation into Aristide’s enforced exile.

Two Canadian ambassadors to Haiti launched diplomatic offensives. Kenneth Cook said “there is no evidence of a kidnapping," and Claude Boucher said, “We hope... Aristide is going to disappear... [and] never come back."

In March 2004, coup Prime Minister Gérard Latortue and David Lee, Canada's ambassador to the Organization of American States, flew by American military helicopter to a celebration of Aristide’s ouster. When Latortue praised Haiti's terror squads, calling them "freedom fighters," Lee nodded in approval.

In June 2005, Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson acknowledged Robert Tippenhauer as Haiti's ambassador to Canada, although no constitutional basis existed for his credentials. A strong representative of Haiti's wealthy business élite, Tippenhauer had also referred to Haiti's terrorists as “freedom fighters.”

In 2006, Canada appointed Haitian-born Michäelle Jean as Governor-General, and she was soon gracing photo-ops with smiling coup-President Boniface Alexandre.

Prime Minister Paul Martin and Foreign Affairs Minister Pettigrew led official junkets to Haiti, unashamedly exalting the coup regime. During reciprocal visits, the illegally-appointed "leaders" were welcomed with open Canadian arms.

Dozens were killed, including many women and children, when hundreds of heavily-armed UN troops and police -- in armoured vehicles and helicopters -- made night-time raids into Port-au-Prince's poorest neighbourhoods. Unperturbed by these war crimes, Canadian ambassador Claude Boucher urged UN troops to “increase their operations” in Haiti.

6. Supporting destructive neoliberal economic policies

Canada helped devise, finance, implement, and legitimize a destructive neoliberal economic restructuring program called the Interim Cooperation Framework (ICF). Within weeks of the coup, the ICF was drafted by "lead donors," including Canada, at the World Bank's Washington headquarters.

Sponsored by the U.S., Canada, and France, the ICF focused on privatization and exporting inexpensive factory goods. While this benefited Haitian élites, foreign corporations, and international financial institutions, the ICF deeply hurt Haiti's poor majority.

In June 2004, 31 Haitian civil-society organizations listed major ICF problems, including:

* "The whole exercise is taking place [under] an increasing loss of sovereignty...[and] long-term military occupation;

* is controlled by external actors...[and] excludes all real participation of the majority and vulnerable sectors of our country;

* ignores the priority social needs of our country’s poor;

* [proposes] superficial solutions to...abject poverty;

* privatiz[ing] the Electricity Company, the Port-au-Prince Water Board, the Telephone Company, the Airport and Port Authorities, [will] probably [have] disastrous effects;

* is taking place in a pseudo-colonial framework...without any concern for transparency;

* next to nothing has been allocated for a credible consultation process; and

* the ICF...reinforces the existing power structure. It risks aggravating the suffering of the most excluded and exploited sectors, and accelerating the process of destroying our nation."

Some of the ICF's most harmful elements were noted by Canadian journalist/activist, Nik Barry-Shaw:

* slashing subsidies for Haiti’s impoverished farmers;

* reducing the minimum wage;

* dismantling an extremely-successful adult-literacy program;

* giving a three-year tax holiday to large businesses; and

* paying $30 million in “back wages” to ex-soldiers from the army Aristide disbanded.

During the window of opportunity offered by Haiti's unelected coup government, Canada secured Haiti’s membership in the private Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) while Foreign Affairs Minister Pettigrew was vice-president of its Board of Governors. Denis Marcheterre, a senior financial specialist with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), said Canada needed to get Haiti into the CDB during the unelected regime because an elected government might not have complied.

Canada participates in the CDB, said Marcheterre, so Canadian corporations can win contracts from borrowing countries, like Haiti. By paying Haiti's CDB membership, Canada helped lock Haiti into long-term debt that would be paid to Canadian contractors.

7. Using aid as a weapon

Canada, the U.S., and France put a stranglehold on development assistance to Haiti's democratically-elected government. External aid to Aristide's government was reduced from $611 million in 1994-95, to $266 million in 1999-2000. After Aristide's second landslide electoral victory in 2000, bilateral aid to his Lavalas-Party government was cut to $136 million. By starving Haiti's popular government of resources, Canada deliberately fostered the “failed-state” conditions whose pretext excused the 2004 coup.

Most of the "aid" that Canada and the U.S. sent after 2000 was not aimed at addressing basic human needs among Haiti's poor majority. It was instead funnelled into relatively wealthy "democracy promotion" groups linked to Haiti's élite corporate class. Most glaringly, CIDA poured $24 million into 12 projects administered -- entirely or in part -- by members of the Group of 184, including more than $500,000 that went straight into the coffers of this right-wing coalition. The G-184 was led by some of Haiti's most hated multimillionaires and sweatshop owners, who provided weapons and funding to paramilitary terrorists whose anti-government violence provoked the 2004 invasion.

CIDA-funded Haitian groups such as CARLI, CONAP, ENFOFANM, FNH, ISC, and PAPDA stirred up domestic and international opposition to Aristide, helped destabilize his popularly-elected government, and called for its immediate demise. CIDA's agents of regime change then ignored or covered up the coup government's worst excesses.

CIDA also funded the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), whose disinformation was widely used by governments, international media, and foreign NGOs. The NCHR worked as an arm of the illegal Canadian-backed coup regime to eliminate political opponents. Within days of the 2004 coup, CIDA gave NCHR $100,000 to help nonexistent victims of a faked "genocide."

NCHR's "special project" fabricated evidence to frame Lavalas activists and leaders. Chief among NCHR's targets was Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, who suffered two years behind bars before being released for lack of any actual evidence.

CIDA contracted several Quebec-based organizations to aid and abet its Haitian regime-change policies. These groups -- including Alternatives, FOCAL, Development and Peace, Réseau Liberté, Rights and Democracy, and Concertation pour Haiti -- either distributed CIDA grants to their Haitian "partners" for viciously anti-Aristide campaigns, or became cheerleaders in the government's propaganda war to cover up atrocities of the coup-imposed dictatorship and rationalize Canada's role in overthrowing Haiti's democracy.

8. Imposing an illegal "justice" system After helping oust Aristide's elected

government, Canada dramatically increased "aid" to Haiti. Most Canadian financing went into police, prisons, and courts. These institutions tightened the illegal dictatorship's grasp on power by persecuting its opponents. CIDA funded and helped administer Haiti's "Ministry of Justice," which coordinated the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, without charge, of hundreds of supporters, activists, and leaders from Aristide's Lavalas Party.

The American government chose USAID official Bernard Gousse to be Haiti's Justice Minister. CIDA -- the Canadian equivalent of USAID -- appointed one of its bureaucrats, Philippe Vixamar, as Deputy Justice Minister. Soon after Gousse's shamed resignation in 2005, Canada replaced Vixamar, and another CIDA bureaucrat, Dilia Lemaire, became Deputy Minister.

During the coup-regime period, Vixamar was interviewed by human rights investigators from the University of Miami’s Law School. Vixamar "revealed that the U.S. and Canadian governments play key roles in the justice system... including paying high-level government officials. He denied there are human rights and constitutional abuses within the criminal justice system."

Deputy-Minister Vixamar said that "CIDA assigned him to this position and is his direct employer. Now in his fourth consecutive year of employment for CIDA, Vixamar had previously worked for USAID for 10 years and was with the U.S. Department of Justice for three."

When asked about "warrantless arrests and reports that hundreds of prisoners have not appeared before a judge... Vixamar denied there were any political prisoners in Haiti."

This lie was echoed by Prime Minister Paul Martin who, when visiting Haiti in November 2004, said, “There are no political prisoners in Haiti.” That month, the Catholic Church’s Commission for Justice and Peace said there were over 700 Haitian political prisoners, including elected cabinet ministers such as Haiti's legitimate Prime Minister Neptune.

Vixamar said his Ministry was "fully confident" in its "exclusive reliance on the National Coalition for Haitian Rights to alert it when the police or courts commit human rights abuses." He also disclosed their sole reliance on this extremely anti-Aristide, CIDA-funded group for vetting "integration of former soldiers into the [Haitian National Police] HNP."

When non-violent activist Father Jean-Juste was arrested without warrant, Amnesty named him a “prisoner of conscience.” Vixamar quipped that Jean-Juste was harbouring "chimères," the Haitian élite’s hateful epithet for criminals, thugs, and Aristide supporters. After two years, Jean-Juste was released without charge.

9. Funding and whitewashing unfair elections

In 2005, CIDA, Foreign Affairs, and Elections Canada created the International Mission for Monitoring Haitian Elections (IMMHE). Chaired by Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer, the IMMHE ignored scandals surrounding the Canadian-funded and supervised 2007 elections.

When election-day reports revealed tens of thousands of cast ballots were found dumped, and mass protests began, the IMMHE said only hundreds were found. Its source was the UN troops responsible for ballot security. The officer in charge was Canadian Colonel Barry MacLeod.

While IMMHE said the “overall picture was positive,” it did admitt some “organization problems”:

* delayed voting-station openings, insufficient space and signage;

* incomplete voters' lists;

* no assistance for illiterate or disabled voters;

* inconsistent voting-centre instructions;

* voting without privacy;

* undelivered ballot-box seals to prevent tampering;

* inadequate lighting for ballot-counting; and

* unmonitored Vote-Tabulation-Centre entry/exit.

The IMMHE, however, ignored these major problems:

* Haiti’s Constitution gives provisional governments 90 days to organize elections. The coup regime missed its deadline by 21 months.

* The illegally-appointed electoral authority was funded by occupation powers, including Canada.

* Thousands of Aristide's Lavalas-Party supporters, organizers and politicians were killed, imprisoned, or exiled, thus excluding their participation.

* Lavalas's presidential candidate, Father Jean-Juste, being jailed without charge, was excluded.

* Lavalas meetings were not permitted, and its rallies were terrorized by police.

* Leaders of paramilitary rebels were allowed to campaign.

U.S. and Canadian governments spent tens of millions on pre-election training for Lavalas opponents, and supported anti-Aristide journalists.

Impoverished Lavalas supporters were disenfranchised by:

* electronic voter registration;

* TV/radio instructions;

* a 94% reduction in registration/voting centres, from 22,000 during Aristide's 2000 election to fewer than 1,300 in 2007;

* disproportionate location of registration/voting centres. (Cité Soleil, where hundreds of thousands of pro-Aristide voters lived, had no voting centre);

* last-minute moves of voting centres;

* forcing 32,000 largely-Lavalas voters into a single centre;

* undersupplied polling materials;

* destroying voter-tally sheets and voters' lists;

* having to walk or line up for many hours;

* discarding 147,765 votes as “null” or "unclear;"

* finding 85,290 "blank" votes, making it harder for the winner to reach 50%; and

* tampering with tally sheets and ballot boxes.

Lavalas has since been banned from two elections. The now-cancelled 2010 elections had planned to exclude Lavalas.

10. Helping corporations profit from Haitian poverty

After the coup, Canada worked hand-in-glove with Haiti's unelected regime to help companies turn handsome profits. The Canadian government bolstered Haiti's élitist regime on business-friendly policies, including “reconstruction” contracts, privatization, and in promoting sweatshops.

Haiti's post-coup military occupation boosted sales of helicopters, assault vehicles, weapons, ammunition, and lucrative contracts for servicing the thousands of foreign troops in Haiti. “Reconstruction” industries from the occupying powers began raking in billions.

Ambassador Claude Boucher wanted Canadian firms to exploit Haiti's post-coup environment. He and acting "Prime Minister" Latortue spawned the Haitian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HCCCI). In an interview with Anthony Fenton, HCCCI's first president, Quèbec high-school graduate Robert Tippenhauer said Canada's role in ousting Aristide and empowering the “transitional” government entitled Canadian businesses to lucrative “post-conflict” contracts.

Latortue, Tippenhauer, and Boucher helped profit-hungry Canadian delegations scouring Haiti for contracts in road construction, telecommunications, energy, urban planning, waste disposal, agroindustry, and manufacturing.

In 2005, Haitian multimillionaire Réginald Boulos said Haiti "offers a lot of opportunities for foreign investors to be involved in privatization." And, he said, electricity, water, and transportation were all "being audited for privatization."

Haiti's Boulos-family empire includes a nefarious pharmaceutical company, supermarkets, and right-wing media. In 2005, Canada flew Boulos and other members of the Haitian élite to meet bankers and bureaucrats at the government's Meech Lake resort near Ottawa. On the table were “privatization” and “private sector provision of public services.” Knowing that Haiti's masses opposed these policies, participants wanted them “properly pushed" immediately.

Another Haitian millionaire, Andy Apaid, helped Boulos lead the virulently anti-Aristide, CIDA-funded Group of 184. Aristide's government said Apaid wasn't paying enough taxes. Apaid also disliked paying his sweatshop employees a decent wage and opposed Aristide's doubling of the minimum wage. Receiving less than a dollar a day, Apaid's wage-slaves made millions for Canadian clothing importers such as Gildan.

In 2000, Minister Pettigrew announced that Gildan was a finalist for the government's "Export Award" for "strengthen[ing] local economies with new jobs.” Ironically, Gildan had shifted more than 200 of its Montreal jobs to Caribbean sweatshops.

In 2003, International Cooperation Minister Susan Whelan gave Gildan the CIDA-funded “Award for Excellence in Corporate Social and Ethical Responsibility.”

In 2006, Gildan received another Social-Responsibility prize at a gala attended by Quebec’s Conservative-cum-Liberal Premier Jean Charest, and 1,000 other business celebrities.

Gildan's shares nearly quadrupled in value during the coup-regime period.

The Moral of the Story

Don't believe the lies your government tells you when it goes to war, or helps overthrow another government. Most Canadians have no idea that Canada was instrumental in overthrowing Haiti's democratically-elected government in 2004.

Some Canadian peace, human rights, and development groups – perhaps unwittingly -- continue to spread government propaganda that presents Canada's odious role in Haiti's regime change as if it was a "humanitarian intervention" that promoted justice and democracy.

Such official Canadian myths hide the brutal atrocities of Haiti's post-coup occupation behind the narrative facade of "peacekeeping," "failed states," and the "right to protect."

Because Canadian progressives have not successfully countered these myths about Haiti, the proud revolutionary people of that country have been forced to endure further humiliation, violence, injustice, and exploitation.

It's time to set the record straight.

__________________________________________________________________-------------

The Conservatives originally approached Gilles Bernier to return to politics in 2005. He was a well-known radio announcer who won successive elections during Brian Mulroney’s tenure in 1984

Separatism And Scandal: Maxime Bernier's Unlikely Road To Redemption

Inbaraj Balraj

05/19/2017 07:16am EDT | Updated May 19, 2017

Maxime Bernier is unloading his baggage.

“I was separatist, I must have voted yes. Write I voted ‘yes,’ I have no problems with that,” he tells HuffPost Canada.

He supported sovereigntists during the 1995 Quebec referendum on independence. Now, he wants to lead a national party and be Canada’s next prime minister.

Admitting that he may have voted to split the country apart is perhaps Bernier’s latest display that he is the candid leader that some Canadians crave.

Among the crowded field of 13 Conservative leadership candidates, the Quebec MP from Beauce is already notorious because of a scandal that rocked his second year in federal politics and got him dumped from cabinet.

“The official thing is I forgot my document, but the non-official [version] is, maybe, she took it,” Bernier says about ex-girlfriend Julie Couillard’s revelation that he left secret documents at her home. (Bernier maintains he never took the papers out of his briefcase, and Couillard refused to participate in a government investigation into the incident.)

“In life, people are entitled to make mistakes,” says Jay Hill, the former Conservative whip who now supports Bernier. “He made them. He never tried to cover them up or excuse his mistakes. He has matured.”

Martin Masse, Bernier’s closest adviser, compares supporting sovereignty to being a communist in university and then changing your mind.

“Obviously, I can understand that some people in English Canada will believe that we are some kind of traitors because we do not believe all our whole life in Canada, but … we just grew up in an environment where it was normal to be in favour of separation,” he says.

Over tea, Bernier tells HuffPost those controversies — new and old — are behind him.

“You know, it’s back [then],” he says. “It’s not important any more.”

Except, in some ways, it is.

Canadians who peripherally follow politics might best remember the 54-year-old as the debonaire Quebecer who brought Couillard, wearing a low-cut dress, to his swearing-in as foreign affairs minister in August 2007. Less than a year later, Couillard’s ties to biker gangs had been revealed and she told the press Bernier had been careless with confidential briefing notes.

In Bernier’s telling of his story, he might not be running for the Conservative leadership were it not for this incident. Had he not spent time in the political doghouse and been free to roam across Canada preaching the values of freedom and a laissez-faire state, he might not have discovered an audience that liked his authentic voice and his message of “no compromises” on conservative principles.

He might not have been emboldened to run for the leadership.

In Couillard’s telling of Bernier's story, offered in scintillating detail in her 2008 book My Story, she says Bernier confided that he believed then-prime minister Stephen Harper would not last a full term in office and that he envisaged himself running to replace him.

On the walls of Bernier’s office on Parliament Hill, several framed news clippings are proudly displayed. There is Bernier on the cover of Wireless Telecom magazine. A 2006 article from L’Actualité titled: “The Albertan From Quebec.”

And a 2007 piece that stands out: “Maxime Bernier, Heir Apparent to Stephen Harper?” In it, La Presse journalist Joël-Denis Bellavance argued that Harper’s dream of transforming the Conservatives into the natural governing party of the 21st century would be assured only if the alliance between Quebec nationalists and Western conservatives remained — and could be best-maintained if the next leader came from Quebec.

A framed La Presse article from 2007 hangs in Maxime Bernier’s office.

The article quoted several of Bernier’s caucus colleagues expressing surprise and admiration that a Quebecer is as unflinching in his support for free-market ideas. “MPs have already let him know that they would support him if he decided one day to succeed Stephen Harper,” Bellavance wrote.

Now, 10 years later, Bernier finds himself vying to replace Harper, but with little caucus support. Only seven MPs have endorsed him.

Still, if public opinion surveys are correct, Bernier is headed to the helm of the party. The Quebec MP was already a top-tier candidate when his primary rival, businessman and reality television personality Kevin O’Leary dropped out of the contest last month and endorsed him.

The two had viciously gone after each other. O’Leary’s camp alleged Bernier’s campaign fraudulently purchased thousands of memberships. Bernier declared war and in turn, alleged that O’Leary’s camp was involved in illegal sign-ups. An investigation found improprieties and 2,729 members were removed from party rolls. No particular campaign was blamed, however, since the memberships were purchased anonymously from the party’s website.

Two weeks before the bombshell announcement, O’Leary called Bernier, asking him to withdraw from the race.

“If you resign, you’ll be my number 2. With you, I can win in Quebec, you’ll be my lieutenant,” Bernier recalls. He says he laughed and said, nope.

After that call, Bernier says he suspected O’Leary would quit. Two days before the final candidates’ debate, O’Leary sent him a text message asking if the two could chat.

When they met, just before midnight in a private condominium downtown, O’Leary offered to endorse Bernier.

O’Leary and Bernier are now all smiles. They are campaigning together, with Bernier musing he plans to encourage the TV celebrity to run for him in 2019.

* * *

Bernier’s entrance into politics is owed in no small part to his father — much as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can thank his dad for helping pave the way.

The Conservatives originally approached Gilles Bernier to return to politics in 2005. He was a well-known radio announcer who won successive elections during Brian Mulroney’s tenure in 1984 and 1988. In 1993, he won again as an independent after then-Tory leader Kim Campbell refused to let him run under the Progressive Conservative banner owing to allegations of fraud and breach of trust.

In 1990, Gilles Bernier and former MP Richard Grisé were charged by the RCMP and accused of hiring each other's children — Maxime and his brother Gilles Jr., and Grisé’s son, Bruno — to perform fictitious work in their offices. House of Commons rules forbid politicians from hiring their spouses or children but not their colleagues’ family members.

The case dragged in court for years, as Bernier’s father tried to have the charges quashed. http://collections.banq.qc.ca:81/lapresse/src/cahiers/1991/10/24/02/82812_1991102402.pdf In 1994, Ontario judge Maria Linhares de Sousa ruled during a preliminary hearing that it was “clear” a fraud had taken place, but she eventually aquitted Gilles Bernier.

According to news reports at the time, she said she believed he had actually participated in the offences but felt that the Crown had presented no evidence that would lead a jury to convict him. Grisé, however, pleaded guilty to two counts of breach of trust and was fined $5,000.

“I remember this at the time,” Bernier says about his dad’s case. “The judge blasted the Crown attorney because there were no proofs at all.” His voice rises. “It was never brought to trial … This was was about people in politics who wanted to hurt my father.”

Gilles Bernier’s constituents didn’t seem to care about the allegations. Neither did Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien, who decided about 1997 that he wanted to win the seat in Beauce but couldn’t do it if the popular MP were still around. So Chrétien made Gilles an offer he couldn’t refuse: an

https://www.britannica.com/place/Haiti-Year-In-Review-1997” target=”_blank”>ambassadorship to sunny, albeit chaotic, Haiti

“But [Chrétien said] ‘One condition: I don’t want you to do politics during the campaign and I want to be sure that my guy will win’,” Bernier recounts. “My dad said: ‘I won’t be able to. I’ll be in Haiti!’”

The Reform Party complained that Gilles Bernier lacked the necessary experience — at the time, his most impressive responsibility had been a two-year stint as chair of the official languages committee — but the appointment went through and a Liberal MP was elected in Beauce that June.

When Harper approached Gilles to run for office again, four years after the end of his ambassadorship, the 70-year-old was flattered, Bernier says, but suggested that the new Conservative leader speak to his son instead.

Maxime, who was born on Jan. 18, 1963, in Saint-Georges-de-Beauce, the capital of the region, had not demonstrated a keen interest in party politics. As a youngster, he talked of becoming an entrepreneur.

He is the second oldest of Gilles’s and Doris’ four children. The eldest, Brigitte, is two years older than Bernier. His sister, Caroline, and brother, Gilles Jr., followed.

In high school, a tall and lean Bernier had been the safety on the football team. He loved sports and in 1980, helped his AA team, the Condors of the Cégep Beauce-Appalaches, win the provincial championship at the Olympic stadium. “That was a very big event for me.”

Bernier describes himself as not the best student in class, but not the worst. “I was a little bit above the average.”

“I was very bad in English,” he admits.

“I still need to work on it,” he adds, laughing.

At 18, he headed to the Université du Québec à Montréal to pursue a bachelor's degree in administration, with a concentration in economics. After graduating in 1985, he entered the University of Ottawa to study civil law.

It was there, during the 1987-88 free trade talks with the United States, that Bernier first caught the political bug. He was living with his father, sharing an apartment with the then-first term MP. Gilles was an involved dad during his childhood, driving him to hockey and football, but now they developed a closer relationship.

“He was always there to listen to me. When I was young, I would go see him for advice. And now, he continues to give me political advice. He is my eyes and ears for what’s going on in Beauce.”

"I never dreamt of being prime minister. But I liked public policy."

As the free trade debate exploded on campus and on the campaign trail, Bernier read the text of the deal, memorized all the clauses, and drafted his father’s election speeches defending the pact.

“I never dreamt of being a member of Parliament. I never dreamt of being prime minister. But I liked public policy,” he says.

Bernier read all he could about the deal and liked to challenge his opponents. “I was a maniac.”

In 1990, Bernier was called to the Quebec bar and he began a two-year stint working for the Clarkson Tétreault (now McCarthy Tétrault) law firm in Montreal, where he had been a summer student. While he articled, he realized he wanted to pursue commercial law, but that section functioned mostly in English and Bernier felt ill-equipped to compete with fully bilingual McGill graduates. Instead, Bernier worked closely with the labour law group, which comprised mostly francophones.

“I didn’t like it,” he says about his work at the firm, still not touching the Earl Grey tea he ordered when we first sat down at the Farmteam Cookhouse and Cellar, a restaurant two blocks from his Hill office. (They didn’t have his first choice of peppermint.)

Bernier’s sensitivity about his English skills is evident when he notes proudly that his daughters speak with no accent. (They attended private English school in Montreal, an allowance under Quebec's language laws because his ex-wife’s father studied in English prior to the adoption of Bill 101.)

Starting a family

Bernier is still close to his former wife, Caroline Chauvin. They met at an art opening. She was there with her girlfriends and he was attending with a group of young lawyers. “The boys” took “the girls” out for drinks, he recalls.

“We had fun and I did a follow-up and it went very well,” he says, laughing. “So I was with her for 13 years.”

Bernier and Chauvin were married in 1991 in a Roman Catholic church ceremony. She is the mother of his two daughters, Charlotte, 18, and Megan, 15.

The marriage didn’t work out, and their divorce was finalized on Sept. 14, 2005 — their wedding anniversary.

“We didn’t succeed in our marriage, but we succeeded in our divorce, and now she is my best friend and we have a very good relationship. Sometimes we have dinner at my girlfriend’s and her boyfriend together, and so it’s a good relationship. I’m very happy, very proud of that.”

Bernier is still a lawyer — he pays his law society dues every year. “I could practice civil law in Quebec, if I ever leave politics.”

But his heart did not lie with law. Bernier left the law firm to become the director of commercial accounts at a National Bank branch in Montreal’s South Shore in 1992, helping small companies expand their businesses. Eventually, he became the branch director.

In 1996, a friend from Bernier’s articling days approached him about a new gig.

“ target=”_blank”>Daniel Audet was the chief of staff

for Bernard Landry, the deputy leader of the Parti Québécois and new provincial finance minister.

Audet wondered if Bernier would be interested in working in the minister’s office on legislative reforms to the financial sector.

“I followed politics. I liked politics, and I knew Bernard Landry because I had met him during the 1988 debate on free trade,” he says.

Bernier had actually invited Landry to the University of Ottawa to speak at a conference.

“At the time, I was a nationalist,” Bernier says, listing the sovereigntist friends he hung out with on campus. Bernier wants me to use the labels “nationalist” or “very nationalist.” He thinks “sovereigntist” or “separatist” might scare anglophone Conservatives.

But Landry has already outed Bernier as a sovereigntist. In a 2010 interview, the former premier of Quebec said that in order to work in his office staff members had to be separatists. “That’s what [Bernier] told me he was, and I believed it, and I still believe it,” he told The Canadian Press.

Bernier doesn’t deny his past leanings. I asked him how he voted during the 1995 referendum. He changes the topic. I bring it back.

Story continues after slideshow:

FLASHBACK: The 1995 Quebec Referendum

Story continues after slideshow:

In Photos: Maxime Bernier

Many of the proposals Bernier champions are found in the Reform Party’s 1996-1997 policies and principles statement, known as the Blue Book, which was co-written by Harper. https://www.poltext.org/sites/poltext.org/files/plateformes/can1996r_plt_en_12072011_124840.pdf

“Ending corporate welfare, it was in the Blue Book. Ending regional development agencies, it was in the Blue Book. Revisit equalization, it was in the Blue Book. Respect the Constitution, it was in the Blue Book. Free trade across Canada, it was in the Blue Book,” says Bernier.

“So the English in Western Canada must recognize themselves in my platform, it’s ideal platform that Stephen Harper wrote for Reform at the time.”

‘The Reform party leader from Quebec’

The similarities are coincidental, Bernier says, noting that they were recently pointed out to him during a trip out west.

It may not be entirely by chance. After all, Masse is a former Reform party member. After giving up on sovereignty in the mid-1990s, Masse decided a decentralized federation could be achieved by uniting with like-minded individuals across Canada. He got a job with the Reform party’s Quebec office and ran as a candidate in a 1996 byelection. He won less than one per cent of the vote. http://www.leblogueduql.org/2010/09/pourquoi-ne-pas-sinspirer-du-parti-r%C3%A9formiste.html

“[Bernier] is like the Reform party leader, from Quebec,” Masse says. “It’s like the perfect combination.”

In Masse’s mind, the story of Maxime Bernier is not a comeback tale, but the far-fetched narrative of a Quebecer from a typically socialist province, a former separatist, and a player in one of the biggest political scandals of recent years, who rises to become the new Reform party leader.

“[He is] the ideal leader that they should have had 20 years earlier to win, but didn’t,” Masse says. Reform had to merge and disappear. Now, he says, Bernier can bring it back.

“That to me is the miracle,” Masse says. “It’s just totally implausible.”

Implausible, perhaps, to everyone but Maxime Bernier.

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