There’s word Quebec M-P Maxime Bernier had already hit the ground running before his bombshell announcement that he would quit the Conservatives and launch his own party. A source close to the controversial M-P tells The Canadian Press on the condition of anonymity that Bernier made a number of phone calls to “key people” across Canada before his news conference announcing his split with the Tories. The source says the group Bernier chose to inform was small but powerful — organizers and business people in cities like Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver — along with “many contacts” who supported his unsuccessful Conservative leadership bid last year. Bernier declared he was leaving the Tories because the party is “too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed.”