{"id":215566,"date":"2019-05-23T04:25:47","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T08:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=215566"},"modified":"2019-05-23T04:27:24","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T08:27:24","slug":"former-tory-cabinet-minister-from-manitoba-to-run-for-peoples-party-of-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/05\/23\/former-tory-cabinet-minister-from-manitoba-to-run-for-peoples-party-of-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Tory cabinet minister from Manitoba to run for People’s Party of Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Steven Fletcher confirms he will launch his campaign Thursday to run in the Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley seat for Bernier’s party. (File Photo<\/a>: Steven Fletcher\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WINNIPEG — A member of the Manitoba legislature and former federal cabinet minister is planning to run for Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada in the upcoming federal election.<\/p>\n

Steven Fletcher confirms he will launch his campaign Thursday to run in the Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley seat for Bernier’s party.<\/p>\n

An email from the party’s electoral district association president describes Fletcher and Bernier as \u201cideological soulmates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fletcher has said the federal Conservatives would not allow him to run under their banner in the next election.<\/p>\n

Fletcher won a seat as a Progressive Conservative in Manitoba’s provincial election in 2016 but was kicked out of caucus a year later for publicly breaking from the party on a number of policies.<\/p>\n

He took over leadership of the Manitoba Party in 2018 after sitting as an Independent.<\/p>\n

Fletcher, who was a Conservative MP for 11 years before losing his Winnipeg seat to the Liberals in 2015, worked with Bernier for nine years under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.<\/p>\n

He spent five years as a minister of state in Harper’s cabinet and Fletcher supported Bernier in the Conservative leadership race that Andrew Scheer won.<\/p>\n

Bernier founded the People’s Party of Canada last year after leaving the Conservative party following a series of disagreements with Scheer.<\/p>\n

Among the party’s policy positions are promises to reduce the total number of immigrants to 250,000 a year, increase border security and end reliance on the United Nations for refugee selection.<\/p>\n

It also wants to make the federal equalization program less generous, reduce interprovincial trade barriers and build more pipelines.<\/p>\n

Fletcher said Wednesday that he supports the party’s policies and always intended to get back into federal politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI intend to work very hard for the people I’ve been called to represent for 15 years now and I will continue to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fletcher previously floated the idea that the Manitoba Party could sister with the People’s Party of Canada, but Bernier’s staff said they had no intention of having a provincial wing of the party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WINNIPEG — A member of the Manitoba legislature and former federal cabinet minister is planning to run for Maxime Bernier’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":215567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215568,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215566\/revisions\/215568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}