His campaign garnered significant media attention mainly due to its libertarian platform which promised to end corporate welfare, eliminate the capital gains tax, and abolish supply management in the Canadian dairy industry.

In addition to taking economic libertarian positions, he opposes mass immigration to Canada, proposes repealing the Multiculturalism Act, supports more restrictions on abortion, and rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.

In his teens, Bernier played football as a member of the Condors, the team of the Séminaire St-Georges, that won the Bol d'Or in 1980 at the Olympic Stadium.

For 19 years, Bernier held positions in law, several financial and banking fields, such as working as a lawyer at McCarthy Tétrault,[10] rising up to become branch manager at the National Bank, the office of the Securities Commission of Québec as Director of Corporate and International Relations,[11] an adviser (handling fiscal reform) from 1996 to 1998 in the office of Bernard Landry—Quebec's finance minister and Deputy Premier of Quebec at the time—and Standard Life of Canada as the Vice-President of Corporate Affairs and Communication.

[14][13] His ties to Beauce[15] and his support for provincial jurisdictions (which was endorsed by former Social Credit party leader Fabien Roy) were factors in his win.

"[27] The incident made Bernier rethink his political career and he decided to avoid taking government information out of his parliamentary office in future.

[25] Six days before the 2008 election, Couillard released a book which was supposed to reveal Bernier's confidential opinions such as his personal objection to Canadian involvement in the Iraq War.

[34][35] Bernier's speeches were criticized by Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Raymond Blanchard and Tom Mulcair,[36][37] but praised by Andrew Coyne, Warren Kinsella, and André Pratte.

[50] In March 2016 Bernier introduced a motion to require Bombardier executives to explain, to the Industry Committee, the reasoning for the federal government to bail them out.

[51][52] At a conservative conference in March 2016, Bernier said that China has "less government and more freedom" than Canada; a video of the speech was later circulated by the Broadbent Institute's Press Progress.

[54] On April 7, 2016, Bernier filed his nomination to be a candidate in the 2017 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election,[50] saying that he was running to promote his views and ideas on four principles: freedom, responsibility, fairness, and respect.

[55][56] In May 2016, Bernier broke from his Conservative colleagues on supply management, the Canadian agricultural system in which a form of insurance is granted to farmers.

[57] After the Conservative Party decided to remove the traditional definition of marriage from their constitution, Bernier was one of few leadership contenders to march in the Toronto Pride Parade.

He proposed abolishing the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, privatizing Canada Post Corporation, phasing out supply management on dairy and poultry,[65] and expanding free trade.

[73][74] Nathan Giede of the Prince George Citizen wrote that Bernier was "the living reincarnation of all Laurier's good ideas and Dief the Chief's pan-Canadian optimism".

In April 2018, he pre-released a chapter on his publisher's website explaining why he made the abolition of Canada's supply management system an issue during the leadership campaign.

[87][88] The chapter referred to Quebec's dairy farmer lobby as "fake Conservatives" because they opposed his abolition of the supply management policy and supported Scheer's candidacy.

[94] On June 15, Bernier stated in an interview that he believed his stance on supply management was the real reason behind his dismissal, not his decision to post the chapter.

[95] In a series of Twitter posts in August 2018, Bernier garnered attention for criticizing Prime Minister Trudeau's comments about "diversity is our strength".

"[108] Commentator Colby Cosh later wrote that Bernier had previously praised ethnic diversity, while also "objecting to its elevation to cult status".

[110][111] He held a press conference at which he declared that the Conservative Party was "too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed", and was afraid to address important issues or articulate a coherent philosophy.

[135] Campaigning in advance of the 2019 Canadian federal election, Bernier and his chief strategist, Martin Masse, aligned the People's Party with the anti-immigrant European New Right, calling for steep cuts to immigration to Canada and criticizing multiculturalism.

[139] On September 2, 2019, Bernier posted a series of tweets in which he called Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg "mentally unstable".

Their affiliations with and support from the far-right were received negatively and the party never surpassed five per cent in national polls; Bernier himself fared poorly in debates and had the lowest net favourability rating among leaders, at -36.

[141] In his riding of Beauce, he faced Conservative candidate Richard Lehoux, a fourth-generation dairy farmer and past president of the Fédération Québécoise des Municipalités.

[146] Bernier announced his intention to run in a by-election when seats became vacant from the resignations of Bill Morneau and Michael Levitt over the summer of 2020.

[149] Bernier was strongly critical of public health measures undertaken to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, having travelled to anti-lockdown protests throughout the country in 2021.

[166][167] Bernier supported the January–February 2022 Canada convoy protest in Ottawa and accused the federal and provincial governments of violating human rights as a result of their imposition of health measures during the pandemic.

[172][10] In 2010, he began a relationship with Catherine Letarte, a National Ballet School-trained ballerina, who worked for a women's shelter and as of 2017 runs a community centre for adults living with mental health issues.

[174][175] Bernier is fond of quoting James M. Buchanan, Friedrich Hayek, and Henry Hazlitt and has been known as "Mad Max",[176][177] the "Bloc-buster",[178][179] or the "Albertan from Quebec" by his Ottawa colleagues.