People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier embraces the nickname “Mad Max” bestowed upon him by friend and foe alike as a badge of honour that he is doing his job to shake up Canada’s political environment.

“I’m mad about the fact we can’t have a discussion about immigration in Canada,” Bernier, a former minister of foreign affairs and industry, said in an interview prior to taking part in a discussion with American political commentator Dave Rubin at Mohawk College. “I’m mad about we can’t have a discussion about climate change. Yes, I’m mad about that.”

The Sept. 29 event, called Uncensored: The State of Free Speech in Canada, attracted about 800 people and a group of protesters, and gave Bernier, 56, an opportunity to talk about how he and his party have been castigated and called racist over his idea to limit immigration, and to debunk climate change.

He wants to slash Canada’s immigration rate, projected to be 350,000 by 2021, to 150,000 a year. And of those immigrants he wants 50 per cent of them to be economic immigrants, meaning skilled workers and entrepreneurs. He is also pushing to have a fence installed at Roxham Road in Quebec to prevent people from entering Canada illegally from the United States. He said about 40 per cent of the 45,000 refugees who entered Quebec will have to be deported.

He said if Canada fails to address its immigrant rates, the country will have the most immigrants in the Western world.

“It is not sustainable,” he said.

Bernier bristles when told this policy is racist, arguing that his party is not anti-immigrant.

“We are not for mass immigration,” said Bernier, who says his party is representing the majority of people’s attitude.

Bernier also cultivates angry responses when he says that climate change is not a global emergency and rejected the widespread belief it is due to human activity.

“There are other factors,” said Bernier. “Other scientists are saying that. So why are we changing our way of life?”

He says Canadians are opposed to paying ever higher costs to address the climate emergency because it is too expensive — about $300 per tonne — to meet the Paris Agreement. Canada agreed to take 15 years to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

“We will let the provinces deal with (climate change),” said Bernier.

He said the party will invest funding to have “clean lakes, clean water and clean land” but there will be no carbon tax, no regulation and there will be no taxes on Canada’s largest pollution emitters.

“We will be able to export our oil and gas by pipelines,” he said. “If climate change is so important for you at the federal level you have a choice to vote for those people that are telling you that they will do something, but in the end they won’t.”

The People’s Party of Canada, founded by Bernier in 2018, has nominated 323 candidates, out of the 338 ridings available. However, the party remains at about 2 per cent in support, according to the latest Nanos poll, below the Bloc Québécois’ 5 per cent and a far cry from the Conservatives’ 34 per cent and the Liberals' 33 per cent.

Bernier said the main political parties are promising Canadians “goodies,” something the People’s Party of Canada isn’t doing, because the “credit card of Canada is full.”

Bernier, who represented the Quebec riding of Beauce as a Conservative MP, also railed against how there is a “double standard” when it comes to criticizing the left and right. He said free speech is limited only to what the left wants to talk about.

“They can do anything they want,” said Bernier, referring to Trudeau’s blackface images.

But when he wants to talk about immigration or climate change, “it’s supposed to be the end of the world. Right now, Canadians want to have that discussion.”

He said his party has been vilified because the left “don’t want to have that discussion because they are afraid Canadians will listen to me.”

“It’s important to have a discussion about climate change, immigration,” said Bernier. “I don’t try to please everybody.”