Maxime Bernier and the People's Party of Canada fail to win any seats

Marco Chown Oved
The Star
Mon, 20 Sep 2021 00:01 UTC

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.

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The People's Party of Canada, which grew in popularity over the campaign, riding a wave of protests against vaccine and lockdown policies, picked up tens of thousands of votes nationally in Monday's federal election.

Over the course of the campaign, PPC Leader Maxime Bernier has been traversing the country, preaching to crowds of people opposed to COVID-19 public-health measures, those who are vaccine skeptics or dislike vaccine passports, as well as reaching those who came to his party for its other policies, such as a vow to cut immigration levels in half.

"More and more Canadians are coming on our side because of tyranny, medical tyranny, and the vaccine passport, that will be imposed on us in every province," Bernier told a crowd in Edmonton recently.

The pitch seemed to be working, harnessing this discontent and moving Bernier from also ran to a man who might just have had the potential to split the vote on the political right.

Erin O'Toole, the Conservative party leader, cautioned conservatives against voting for the People's Party, saying a vote for Bernier's party would help Justin Trudeau's Liberals.

"Justin Trudeau wants you to split the vote by voting PPC," O'Toole said over the weekend.

Back in 2019, Bernier's nascent party failed to win a single seat and managed only 1.6 per cent of the popular vote; Bernier, who had represented the Quebec riding of Beauce since 2006, failed to win his own seat, which was taken by Conservative Richard Lehoux.

This time around, bolstered by waves of dissatisfaction over the handling of the pandemic, Bernier, in the days leading up to the election, looked poised to receive somewhere around six per cent of the popular vote, according to the polling aggregator 338Canada, around double what the Green Party was projected to receive, and hot on the heels of the Bloc Québécois.

When polls first closed in Atlantic Canada, the PPC received 4.6 per cent of the popular vote, according to early Elections Canada data. As further polls opened across the country, they held steady around that number.

"I'm feeling good," said Bernier to a CBC reporter shortly after all polls closed. "Four, five, six per cent that's big for us in Atlantic Canada ... so I believe tonight will be a good night for us."

Bernier has said that after this election, his party was here to stay. Still, on Monday night Bernier was projected to lose his riding.