Maxime Bernier decries 'woke ideology' at campaign stop in Dartmouth
People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier made a campaign stop Monday in Dartmouth, N.S., where he condemned "woke ideology" and said Canada is on the precipice of going "down the drain."
The former Conservative cabinet minister held a news conference on the Dartmouth waterfront on Day 9 of the federal election campaign. He highlighted one of the pillars of the PPC platform: ending what he calls "woke" policies.
Specifically, he said he would end policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion in the military.
"[Justin] Trudeau did everything he could to destroy our proud Canadian Forces by imposing his insane woke ideology on the military," said Bernier.
He criticized vaccination requirements that resulted in nearly 300 service members being released, and "diversity hiring quotas."
PPC Leader Maxime Bernier, centre, stands on the waterfront of Dartmouth, N.S., flanked by PPC candidates Ryan Slaney and Michelle Lindsay. (Jeorge Sadi/CBC)
The Canadian military and Department of National Defence have, according to the military ombudsman, adopted many initiatives over the last two decades to address long-standing barriers to the recruitment and retention of women, visible minorities and Indigenous people.
Yet the military is still largely made up of white males, and the ombudsman said in 2022 there has been little progress in increasing diversity.
Bernier was flanked by two PPC candidates who are running in the Halifax area. The party has nominated candidates in 10 of 11 Nova Scotia ridings.
The leader said his party will have a full slate in time for the April 28 election.
This will be Bernier's third general election running as a PPC candidate in Beauce, the Quebec riding he used to represent as a Conservative MP. Bernier split from the Conservatives after he lost the 2018 leadership race to Andrew Scheer.
As of Monday, CBC's poll tracker has the PPC in a distant sixth place with about two per cent of the projected vote share.
Bernier's central campaign promises are pausing immigration, ending "woke" policies, boosting the economy by cutting spending and implementing policies related to national security.
He said Monday that if the PPC platform isn't enacted in the coming months, Canada is heading "down the drain."
"We are so different than the Liberals and the Conservatives on the most important issues for the future of this country. If you believe in this country, if you want to have a prosperous country, you need to support our candidates here in Nova Scotia and all across the country," he said.
Bernier has been accused of courting far-right, conspiratorial racists, especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's podcast as recently as March 22.
The PPC has denied that people with "extreme views" are welcome in the party.
It received five per cent of the national vote during the 2021 federal election and has never won a seat.
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Former O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do headed to prison for COVID relief bribery scheme
Andrew Do, the former Orange County supervisor who took more than $550,000 in bribes over COVID-relief money meant to buy meals for needy, elderly constituents, was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison. 'I just do not believe a sentence anything less than the maximum reflects the seriousness of the crime,' said U.S. District Judge James Selna. "Public corruption brings damage far beyond the monetary loss to the county." The judge expressed displeasure that the law allowed him to sentence Do to only five years. Do fled war-torn Vietnam with his family as a child to become an attorney and one of Southern California's most powerful Vietnamese American politicians. As part of a plea deal, Do admitted last year that he funneled more than $10 million in federal pandemic funds to a nonprofit that in turn steered money to his two daughters. The scandal was uncovered in 2023 by the news site LAist, which reported that Do approved contracts worth millions to the nonprofit, which promised to provide meals to the poor, elderly and disabled residents of Little Saigon but could show scant evidence of its effort. Do approved the contracts without disclosing that his 23-year-old daughter Rhiannon, a law student at UC Irvine, had signed documents identifying herself as the nonprofit's president or vice president. As accusations mounted, Do claimed he was the victim of slander, responding with defiant vitriol against the reporter who broke the story, Nick Gerda, and demanding his firing. When the Orange County Register called for Do's resignation, he accused the newspaper of spreading 'gross misinformation.' Late last year, however, Do agreed to resign from the Board of Supervisors and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. Federal prosecutors said the Viet America Society gave Rhiannon a job, and paid her as an employee, after her father voted in favor of the lucrative contracts. Prosecutors also said the organization steered money to Do's other daughter through an air conditioning company. 'I'm very grateful that the judge saw the case for what it is,' said Janet Nguyen, the current First District Supervisor. 'He benefitted while people suffered. He took advantage during the pandemic, when no one was watching.' She said the county is conducting an audit to better understand how Do's scheme was allowed to occur. Prosecutors accused Rhiannon Do of making a false statement on a loan application, but agreed to defer the charge, allowing her to enter a diversion agreement in exchange for her cooperation. The elder Do, a Republican, worked as a deputy public defender and a prosecutor before he won a special election in 2015 to represent Orange County's 1st Supervisorial District, which covers Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Westminster and Seal Beach. He became the second Vietnamese American ever to serve on the board, and was later elected to two four-year terms. He was known for his efforts to combat homelessness and for his sponsorship of a Tet Festival in Fountain Valley that drew thousands of people annually. At a time when Vietnamese immigrants face increased threats of eviction and deportation, the disgraced supervisor's behavior 'erodes the already precarious level of trust our community has in the government,' said Mai Nguyen Do, the research and policy manager for the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, a community group. 'After he's released, it wouldn't surprise me if he goes about his life, and meanwhile so many working-class people in the community don't have the resources to pick themselves up again after they're incarcerated,' said Do, who has no relation to the former supervisor. Jodi Balma, a professor of political science at Fullerton College who has followed the Do scandal, wondered how the bribery scheme somehow passed through the checkpoints of the county bureaucracy. 'There are really good and smart though somewhat annoying procedures in place to verify all contracts with the county,' Balma said. 'Somebody had to say, 'Approve that payment' without any receipts or verification or services. And those people have not been held responsible.' Balma also wondered whether it was fair that Rhiannon Do was allowed to enter a diversion program. 'If there is no punishment for his daughter, that feels unfair to all the other law students who might not be accepted to the California Bar Association because of misconduct,' Balma said. 'This is huge misconduct for someone who wants to be a lawyer.' Andrew Do's defense attorneys asked that he be sentenced to 33 months in prison. In a court filing, they said he had been volunteering at a maritime institute that teaches sailing to underprivileged teens, adding that the head of the program had praised Do's 'unwavering ethical compass.' The defense attorneys said that Do had expressed 'shame' and 'deep sorrow' for his crimes, that his license to practice law had been suspended and that his life has been 'destroyed by his own acts.' Do had 'received no actual payment to himself—all significant funds were provided to his daughter Rhiannon Do,' the defense wrote in a court motion, claiming he had been 'willfully blinded to the violations by the desire to see benefit to his adult daughter.… He now recognizes how completely wrong he was in this catastrophic self-delusion.' The plea deal called for restitution between $550,000 and $730,500, with the sale of the family's forfeited house in Tustin credited against that figure. 'This episode of poor judgment stands out as unique in his otherwise commendable life,' the defense wrote. 'He had a catastrophic lapse of judgment when he failed to stop payments to his daughters, and because VAS was helping his family, he failed to see the red flags of these illegal acts.' Pleading for leniency, defense attorneys invoked Do's backstory as a man who rose to public service after a childhood in war-ravaged Vietnam. But prosecutors said his background only amplified his guilt, considering many of the constituents he victimized had similarly difficult pasts, and he was aware of their vulnerability. Do 'made the decision to abandon the elderly, sick, and impoverished during a national emergency so that he could personally benefit,' prosecutors wrote. 'When the County and nation were at their most vulnerable, defendant saw an opportunity to exploit the chaos for his own benefit and, in so doing, betrayed the trust of hundreds of thousands of his constituents,' prosecutors wrote. 'The scheme was far-reaching and premeditated, and defendant had no qualms about pulling others into his criminal enterprise, including his own children.' Do's crimes, the prosecutors wrote, were 'an assault on the very legitimacy of government.' Calling his conduct 'despicable' and his attempt to minimize his crimes 'absurd,' prosecutors said that of the more than $10 million he steered to the Viet America Society , much of it supposedly for meal programs for the elderly and disabled, only $1.4 million went to that purpose. Do's willingness to involve his family in his scheme pointed to his 'moral indifference,' prosecutors said, while his campaign of invective against the press aggravated his culpability. In connection with the Do case, the U.S. Attorneys office announced charges last week of bribery against the founder of the Viet America Society, and for wire fraud against a man affiliated with another Orange County relief group. The judge ordered that Do surrender himself to federal custody by Aug. 15 and recommended he be incarcerated in the federal prison in Lompoc. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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31 minutes ago
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Chamberlain hoped to ‘avoid worst' as Second World War loomed
Neville Chamberlain wrote 'I still hope we may avoid the worst' six days before the start of the Second World War, a letter has revealed. The former prime minister is infamous for his failed appeasement policy, which saw him offer Adolf Hitler numerous concessions to try to avoid war. Now a newly discovered letter suggests he clung on to the hope his strategy would pay off up until the moment Germany invaded Poland on Sept 1 1939. Writing to Captain William Brass, the Conservative MP, on Aug 26 1939, he said: 'I still hope we may avoid the worst, but if it comes we are thank God prepared for it.' Chamberlain's confidence in Britain's readiness for war would prove to be misplaced as within nine months the Nazis had captured swathes of Europe. More than 330,000 British Expeditionary Force troops had to be hastily evacuated at Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4 1940, to enable Britain to 'fight another day'. The day before Chamberlain's hopeful note, however, Britain had signed the Anglo-Polish military alliance, promising to support Poland if its independence was threatened. Hitler had originally scheduled his invasion of Poland for Aug 26, but when news of the Anglo-Polish pact reached Berlin, he temporarily postponed the attack by six days. Chamberlain's policy of appeasement saw Britain make no response to Hitler's annexation of Austria in March 1938, a move Winston Churchill warned at the time was a mistake. During a speech in the House of Commons, Churchill said: 'The gravity of the annexation of Austria cannot be exaggerated.' Hitler quickly moved on to trying to control the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, and by Sept 1928 Chamberlain had flown to Hitler's holiday home to negotiate in person, to no avail. Chamberlain said at the time: 'How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.' The Munich agreement saw Chamberlain sign over the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany from Oct 1 1938, in exchange for Hitler giving up on plans for further expansion across Europe. Churchill called it a 'total and unmitigated defeat' and it failed to stop Nazi Germany annexing more Czech land, including Prague, and launching an invasion of Poland – which finally sparked war. Chamberlain lost the confidence of Parliament and resigned as prime minister in May 1940, when Churchill stepped up to lead the nation. The one-page letter, on 10 Downing Street letterhead and dated Aug 26 1939, has emerged for sale at RR Auction in Boston, US. It is tipped to fetch $20,000 (£15,000) because of its historical significance. An RR Auction spokesman said: 'Behind the scenes, British diplomats were still scrambling to avert war. Chamberlain hoped that deterrence, through strong alliances and military mobilisation, might still dissuade Hitler. 'At the same time, Britain was accelerating preparations – air raid precautions were being implemented across cities, reservists were being called up, and public morale was being steeled for the possibility of conflict. 'Thus Britain found itself in a state of grim resolve: committed to defending Poland, preparing for war, yet still clinging to fragile hopes that Hitler might yet be deterred. 'Within a week, however, those hopes would be extinguished as Germany launched its invasion of Poland on September 1.' The sale takes place on Wednesday. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
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Baltimore's top prosecutor seeks funding for division he says helped lower city's crime rates
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