People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier visits Windsor
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Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada, is making a stop in Windsor Wednesday night.
Bernier is expected to join local PPC candidates at the Windsor Club for an event beginning at 6 p.m.
The club is located in the Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore riding, where Nick Babic is the party's candidate.
Jacob Bezaire is the PPC candidate in nearby Windsor West, while Jason Henry is running in Essex.
Bernier's party is currently polling behind the Greens and the Bloc Québécois at 1.7 per cent, according to CBC's Poll Tracker.
The party, which Bernier founded in 2018 after leaving the Conservatives, made vote gains in the last federal election, earning roughly 5 per cent of the vote share — but it has so far failed to win a seat in Parliament.
Bernier has campaigned on stopping "mass immigration," ending gender-affirming care for transgender people, and slashing government programs and agencies among other things.
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CBC
02-05-2025
- CBC
With less than 1% of the vote, does the People's Party of Canada have a future?
Four years ago, the People's Party of Canada was poised to be a thorn in the Conservative Party's side. Riding the momentum of its anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown, anti-immigration agenda during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, the young party won five per cent of the national vote. It peeled supporters away from other parties — in particular, a more moderate Conservative Party led by Erin O'Toole — and found new ones who felt disenfranchised by the country's traditional political system. Maxime Bernier, an ex-Conservative MP who left the party after an unsuccessful leadership bid, coalesced a small base of voters around what he called an "ideological revolution." His new party didn't win a seat, but it more than tripled support from the 2019 election. WATCH | Bernier speaks during a campaign stop in Windsor, Ont.: People's Party leader brings message to Windsor, Ont., crowd 22 days ago Duration 2:17 Fast-forward to election night 2025. The PPC notched just 0.7 per cent of the national vote on Monday, and Bernier came fourth in his own riding, losing by nearly 34,000 votes. Since founding the party in 2018, he hasn't won a seat in the House of Commons. Does the People's Party have a future? Despite Monday's results, Bernier said the group isn't going away. "The People's Party will be there at the next election — in two years or four years — with the same ideas and the same platform," he told CBC News during an interview on Thursday. "When Canadians will be ready, we will be there." Unclear path forward Eric Merkley, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto who researches political polarization, said the People's Party's performance has depended on specific economic and social conditions that weren't present this time around. During the pandemic, the party gained momentum from Canadians strongly opposed to what they perceived as government overreach on COVID-19 public health measures. The Conservatives, meanwhile, took a more middle-of-the-road approach. "A lot of their vote was from people that were aggrieved by the pandemic in one way or another, and as the pandemic has receded into the background, they've lost a lot of that power," said Merkley. He added that Poilievre worked hard to bring some of those voters back into the Conservative fold, which made it very hard for the PPC "to breathe electorally." "I don't really think those conditions are going to change," said Merkley. "Absent a new, more centrist Conservative Party leader, and absent a new crisis that they can kind of stoke grievance around, I don't really think they have a path forward." A two-horse race Bernier acknowledged that many voters who'd previously voted for the PPC, during what had largely become a two-horse race between the Conservatives and Liberals, went to the Conservatives in fear of a split vote. "For me, that election was not a traditional election, if I may express myself like that. It was a referendum on the 51st state," said Bernier. "It was about the tariffs and counter-tariffs and who will be the best one to negotiate with President Trump." David Coletto, the founder and CEO of Abacus Data, said the People's Party suffered from the same conditions that impacted the Green Party and the NDP at the other end of the political spectrum. "The choice became binary and there was little space left for smaller parties," he said. During the final week of the campaign, only 15 per cent of people polled by Abacus said they'd be open to voting for the PPC — much lower than other parties, including the Greens. "I think that's reflective of the question that I think hangs over the party: What is its purpose?" said Coletto. With the pandemic no longer a salient electoral issue, Bernier campaigned on ending "mass immigration," scrapping what he referred to as "woke" policies concerning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and trans people, boosting the economy by cutting public spending and implementing stricter policies around national security. "I know that some of our ideas are not that popular. But we believe that [they are] the best solutions for the future of this country," he said. While Bernier has said that " people who are racist" aren't welcome in the party, some have accused him of courting support among white supremacists and far-right extremists. He was interviewed by InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in March, and last month spoke with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was fired by the network and now hosts his own show. He also recently appeared on a podcast hosted by alt-right political influencer Charlie Kirk. Bernier looks to the U.K.'s Reform Party as a sort of blueprint for the PPC's future. Leader Nigel Farage, a controversial figure in British politics who has railed against mass immigration, tried to win a seat in the country's Parliament for years. He was finally successful last summer, on his eighth try — and some pundits expect that Reform will make major gains in the country's local elections this week. "Their platform is almost the same as the People's Party," said Bernier. "So our time will come." Bernier pledges a leadership review As polls closed and results came flooding in on election night, Jason Kenney, the former Alberta premier and Conservative cabinet minister, had some choice words for a party that — just four years ago — seemed to pose a serious risk to the Conservative coalition. "For me, one of the positive things tonight is the total disappearance of the People's Party of Canada. Less than one per cent. Stick a fork in it," said Kenney. "So that should no longer be a distraction for the Conservative Party. And I think it's an opportunity to acknowledge some real progress that has been made by the party. But also a moment for humility to see how it could've been done differently." Bernier, who has repeatedly called Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre a "fake conservative," said the PPC will focus on winning back the voters it lost this year. Asked why he hasn't been able to secure a seat in the House of Commons since he left the Conservatives, he said it's "because I don't do any polling. I don't tell the population what they want to hear today." The People's Party will conduct a leadership review in a few weeks, he said, adding that the party has several young candidates who could plausibly take its helm should the membership call for a change. "It's very important for the democracy in our party. And depending on the result, I will stay or I will leave, but we'll see." He is unsure of whether he'll run in a byelection — as he has unsuccessfully in the past — to win a seat in Parliament.
CBC
01-05-2025
- CBC
How the Liberals came up short in Ontario — and lost their majority bid
Winning a fourth mandate and returning to power was certainly a victory for the federal Liberals, but it was marred by a disappointing showing in Ontario which played a significant role in costing them a majority. "Obviously, if you compare to where the Liberals were three months ago, it was an unbelievably amazing result in Ontario. But I think it would be fair to say that to get to a majority government, they needed to hold their own in Ontario," said Dan Arnold, chief strategy officer for the research firm Pollara and former research strategist for Justin Trudeau's Liberals. "I think you could at least say that their inability to, or the fact that they lost seats in Ontario, is probably the reason it's a minority as opposed to majority government." The Liberal Party did end up winning 69 seats, the most in the province, with 49.6 per cent of the popular vote. But the Conservatives weren't far behind, winning 53 seats and 44 per cent popular vote. It was a net gain for the Conservatives of 16 seats, and loss of nine for the Liberals. The NDP's five seats in the province were wiped out. The results seemed to defy some projections. Éric Grenier, a polls and elections analyst who writes The Writ newsletter and runs CBC's Poll Tracker, had projected the Liberals to win 82 seats and the Conservatives 38. "This was where the surprise came in, primarily in York Region of the Greater Toronto Area and in southwestern Ontario. The Conservatives beat their polls in Ontario by a small amount, but their vote proved more efficient than expected," Grenier wrote. The results in Ontario looked very different than they did during the Trudeau years, Arnold said. The Liberals this election did do better in the Ottawa area, most notably picking up Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's seat in Carleton. And in some Toronto ridings, their win margins were much larger than before, he said. Liberals lost seats in GTA The Liberals scored victories in places like Peterborough and the Bay of Quinte, parts of the province where they did better than they had in past couple elections. But there were other parts on the province where they recorded some big losses, including in the 905 region and ridings like Brampton West, Cambridge, Markham-Unionville, Newmarket-Aurora, and Vaughan-Woodbridge, all won by Conservatives. For example, Liberal candidate Francesco Sorbara won three times under Trudeau in Vaughan-Woodbridge but lost Monday by 20 percentage points, Arnold noted. As well, Brampton West Liberal candidate Kamal Khera, a cabinet minister in both Trudeau and Carney governments, lost in her riding, despite winning in 2021 by over 20 points. "So there's some very dramatic swings there," he said. As to why the political shift, voters in that particular area may have been more sensitive to issues like affordability and housing pressures over the last couple years, issues that Poilievre had zeroed in on during the campaign and before, Arnold said. "For a lot of voters there, that probably trumped the Trump factor when they were kind of ranking their priorities" Arnold said. David Coletto, founder and CEO of Abacus Data, echoed that millennial and Gen X voters in the Greater Toronto Area whose mortgage payments went up substantially over the last years of the Trudeau government may have turned to the Conservatives. Those issues may have been muted when Trump was the main factor but in the final two weeks of the campaign, based on Abacus tracking, the concerns about Trump faded and gave the Conservatives an opening to make the case for change, Coletto said. Affordability and crime were two issues that mattered to a lot of voters in that 905 region that worked against the Liberals, he said. He said in many parts of the 905 area, there was the perception that crime, particularly auto thefts, had gotten out of hand, and that was linked to the Trudeau years. "And I think the Conservatives in the final week-and-a-half of the campaign really tried to put a focus on that," Coletto said. Boots vs. suits But there was also the opening up of the "boots versus suits" dynamic in Ontario that has become a political advantage for Conservatives, he said. That the Conservatives won both Windsor ridings may be an in indication of the slight realignment of the party — to get those working-class, private-sector, unionized voters in the trades, manufacturing and natural resource sectors into their camp, Coletto said. "The absolute devastation of the NDP really opened that up," he said. The GTA was was a roadblock for the Liberals in a way but Conservatives made some important gains in other parts of the province." Arnold added that the Liberals ate the NDP vote in many parts of the province, but there wasn't as much NDP vote to begin with in the 905, which hurt the Liberals in terms of growth. "The biggest dynamic of this campaign was the fall of the NDP. And in places where the fall of the NDP helped the Liberals, like in Peterborough, that's a great night for them. But in places where either there wasn't as much NDP to fall or it went more to the Conservatives or split evenly, those are the places where I think they struggled more in Ontario." Vote-splitting on the left Laura Stephenson, professor of political science at Western University, said in some ridings like London Fanshawe and Windsor West, in which the NDP incumbent lost to a Conservative, there was likely vote-splitting on the left. Prior to Carney becoming the leader, there may have been strong support going to the NDP incumbent. In this case, it's likely that some stayed with the NDP incumbent but others went to the Liberal candidates, she sad. "So it was almost like a failure of co-ordination on the progressive side," she said. Stephenson also suggested the Doug Ford factor should also not be ruled out for Liberal challenges in the province.
Canada Standard
30-04-2025
- Canada Standard
Game change Canadian election: Mark Carney leads Liberals to their fourth consecutive win consecutive
Canada's 2025 federal election will be remembered as a game-changer. Liberal Leader Mark Carney pulled off a dramatic reversal of political fortunes after convincing voters he was the best candidate to fight annexation threats from United States President Donald Trump. "We are over the shock of the American betrayal; we have to take care of each other," he told cheering supporters in his victory speech in Ottawa. "Together we will build a Canada worthy of our values. Canada strong, Canada free, Canada forever, vive le Canada!" Canadians gave the Liberals their fourth mandate since 2015, although the race against the Conservatives was much closer than polls predicted. Nonetheless, only four months ago, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had a 25-point lead in public opinion polls and a fairly secure path to victory. Yet Poilievre's lead soon vanished due to shifting voter sentiments defined less by the official campaign period and more by the months that preceded it. Justin Trudeau's early January resignation announcement and Carney's confirmation that he was officially in the Liberal leadership race dramatically changed the political landscape. Read more: After stunning comeback, centre-left Liberals likely to win majority of seats at Canadian election Within a matter of weeks, Liberal support surged when Carney became party leader and Trump continued to make threats about Canada becoming a 51st American state - and to levy punishing on-again, off-again tariffs against the country. The party went from being 20 percentage points behind the Conservatives to overtaking them, putting the party on track to secure its fourth consecutive victory. A shift described by longtime pollster Frank Graves as "unprecedented." The emerging "Canada Strong" and "Elbows Up" narratives, linked to the widespread anti-Trump sentiment, proved a major advantage for the Liberals, who made the most out of this political gift. This shift, alongside Carney's elimination of the carbon tax, left Poilievre on the back foot as his longstanding messaging on Trudeau and his "axe the tax" slogan became largely irrelevant. Poilievre also lost his Ottawa-area seat to a Liberal. Read more: Who really killed Canada's carbon tax? Friends and foes alike The impact of these shifts in electoral fortunes extended beyond the two main parties. As the election became increasingly a two-party race between the Liberals and Conservatives, the smaller parties struggled for relevance. Election campaign polling and early results indicated steep losses for the NDP, with Jagmeet Singh losing his own seat in Burnaby, B.C. and then resigning as party leader. This could be due to voters on the left responding to calls to vote strategically to prevent Conservative victories in various ridings. The Bloc Quebecois also lost ground, as did the Green Party of Canada and the People's Party of Canada (PPC). Neither the Greens nor the PPC fielded full slates of candidates or participated in the leaders' debates and therefore played comparatively limited roles in this election. Another notable feature of this election was the record advance voting turnout, which surged to 7.3 million Canadians, up sharply from 5.8 million in 2021. Early voting has now become a central part of party campaign strategy, with campaigns "getting out the vote" at every opportunity, not just on Election Day. This trend raises questions not only about whether overall turnout will rise, but also whether party platforms remain as influential given so many votes were cast before all parties released their platforms. While many Canadians take in elections with a focus on party leaders and seat counts, there are other important ways to contemplate election outcomes in terms of inclusion and voice. What does this election tell us about gender and diversity representation in Canada's Parliament? This was a deeply gendered election. The major party leaders are all men, with the exception of Elizabeth May, the Green Party co-leader. Preliminary candidate data showed a decrease in the number of women candidates compared to 2021. The NDP nominated the highest proportion of women candidates - the majority of its candidates are women - and fielded the most diverse slate of candidates in terms of Indigenous people, Black people, racialized people and LGBTQ+ candidates. But the party's dramatic losses mean these gains will not translate into more diverse representation in Parliament. Furthermore, one of Carney's first actions as prime minister was to eliminate the sex-balanced cabinet and to reduce the size of the cabinet. He eliminated the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) as well as ministerial portfolios focused on youth, official languages, diversity, inclusion, disability and seniors. These decisions reverse previous efforts taken to institutionalize gender and diversity leadership in Canada's Parliament. Party platforms also reflected diverging approaches when it came to women. The Conservative platform only mentioned women four times, and three of those mentions were in the context of opposition to transgender rights. Read more: Pierre Poilievre's 'More Boots, Less Suits' election strategy held little appeal to women Polling also revealed intersections of generation, gender and class are increasingly relevant. Like the last federal election, young working-class men are increasingly drawn to the Conservatives. This trend appears to be driven less by fiscal conservatism and more by concerns about rapid social change, a trend also observed in the 2024 American presidential election. Many of these young men are expressing frustrations over housing affordability and job security, and what they view as the Liberal and NDP's "woke culture," which they regard as eroding traditional values that have traditionally benefited men. In contrast, Canadian women of all ages continue to favour parties they view as more progressive - the Liberals and the NDP. Theoretical explanations for this include young men feeling left behind by the Liberals, while the Conservatives have seemingly figured out a way to connect with them. This may reflect campaign rhetoric about returning to traditional expectations and values around gender roles and men's rights to well-paying jobs, an affordable home and taking care of their families. In the aftermath of the election, there are avenues through which current gaps in representation can be addressed. Organizations like the United Nations' Inter-parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, as well as gender and politics scholarship, propose various reforms to continue to strengthen diversity in Parliament. These reforms are understood to be essential for enhancing the legitimacy, responsiveness and effectiveness of Canada's parliamentary system. Research on gender-and diversity-sensitive parliaments consistently shows that when legislative bodies reflect the diversity of the societies they govern, they are more likely to produce policies that are equitable, inclusive and trusted by the public. Overall, this Canadian election was characterized by transformative twists and turns that shed more light on important ongoing questions about representation and the potential need for democratic reform if Canadians want to avoid a two-party system.
