People’s Party shut out despite surge in support

After a campaign where his party became synonymous with the anti-lockdown protests that dogged opposing leaders and crowded outside hospital emergency rooms, Maxime Bernier has lost his bid to regain a seat in Parliament.

Despite a surge in nationwide support for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), none of its candidates will join elected MPs in Ottawa.

From his election night party in Saskatoon where supporters were conspicuously unmasked and indoors, Bernier tried to find some positive in the results, noting that the party had leapfrogged the Greens in national support.

The PPC’s support surged during the campaign, earning around five per cent of the nationwide vote — more than double the support the PPC had six weeks ago — and propelling his party into fifth place in early results, according to the CBC’s election tracker.

Bernier’s message emphasizing personal freedom and condemning “authoritarian” government measures resonated far more than many expected at the outset of the campaign.

But as groups of angry protesters repeatedly showed up at campaign stops for Trudeau and other leaders, it became clear that the PPC was riding a wave of discontent and it was soon difficult to distinguish between a People’s Party rally and an anti-lockdown protest.

In June, Manitoba police arrested Bernier for violating public health orders, including refusing to self-isolate upon entering the province.

Shortly afterward, in London, a now-expelled PPC riding president, Shane Marshall, was criminally charged for allegedly throwing gravel at Trudeau.

In only its second campaign, the PPC received almost universal condemnation in the mainstream media for encouraging anti-vaccine sentiment, denying anthropogenic climate change and espousing xenophobic immigration policy. And that’s when the party got any coverage at all.

In a pre-election interview, Bernier complained that not only were his largest rallies ignored in the press, even when journalists showed up, stories would not appear afterward.

“I believe that the mainstream media are afraid of our message,” he told the Star.

The PPC’s platform, Bernier said, is the same as it was in 2019 when the party ran its first campaign after splintering off the Conservative Party. But this time around, Canadians have spent the last 18 months with their lives turned upside down, coping with ever-changing public health advice and restrictions.

“Now, more people understand our policies,” Bernier said, “because people are mad, people are angry. They don’t like (that the) government is violating their rights.”

While animosity against COVID-19 public health measures undoubtedly attracted many to the PPC, the rest of its platform — a mishmash of libertarian and free market ideas combined with a nostalgic view of cultural purity that harkens to the far-right parties of Europe — has convinced them to stay, Bernier says.

“People understand that this election is a historical election for the future of this country,” he said.

Beauce, a largely agricultural riding south of Quebec City, elected Maxime’s father, Gilles, as MP in the 1980s and 1990s. Like his father, Maxime Bernier started as a Conservative and left the party only to lose reelection.

The younger Bernier first became an MP in 2006 and was re-elected three times. He served as minister of industry and foreign affairs under former prime minister Stephen Harper before stepping down amid an outcry after he left confidential government documents at the house of his thengirlfriend, who had biker gang connections.

In 2017, Bernier ran for the leadership of the Conservatives, losing by less than two per cent. Breaking from party orthodoxy, Bernier proposed ending agricultural supply management, which subsidizes dairy, poultry and egg farming.

Shortly after his loss, Bernier left the Conservatives, declaring them “too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed,” and started his own party, the PPC.

From the outset, Bernier modelled his new party on antiimmigrant messages that had gained traction south of the border.

The last election finished with Bernier losing his own seat to Conservative Richard Lehoux, and the PPC being shut out of Parliament, with only 1.6 per cent of the popular vote.

But COVID changed everything.

Bernier’s goal of four per cent appeared to have been more than achieved in the final weeks of the campaign. This toehold in Canadian politics is just the beginning, he said.

“I just repeat what I said in 2019. It’s the same argument, the same platform. And it will be the same one after the election and I know our support will grow.”