The third anniversary of Maxime Bernier’s exit from the Conservative Party of Canada is approaching. Following his firing from Andrew Scheer’s shadow cabinet and subsequent involvement in a media firestorm surrounding his comments on diversity and multiculturalism, he decided to quit the party and form his own. Dubbing it the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), Bernier claimed that his new party would stand for “smart populism” and true conservative values. Having participated in debates for the 2019 federal election, Bernier and his new political party had a chance to put forward its vision and slate of candidates. Simply put, it didn’t go great. Bernier lost the seat he had held for 13 years, and the PPC failed to win a single riding. Yet the PPC has continued on, having contested two Toronto by-elections last October and seemingly poised to contest the next federal election, whenever it should happen.
Maxime Bernier made a lot of noise in his abrupt exit from the Conservative Party. Nonetheless, any stature he had as a Member of Parliament, former Minister, and runner-up in the 2017 Conservative Party leadership race did not translate into the 2019 election results. For a party that claimed to be challenging the Conservatives ideologically and taking on Canada’s entire political establishment, Bernier’s PPC got trounced. This result was entirely predictable, as the PPC never quite got off to a proper start. Founded a little over a year before the next federal election and seemingly bound by Bernier’s promise to contest as many of Canada’s 338 ridings as possible, the scramble to establish electoral infrastructure faced major challenges. In the midst of its chaotic founding, the fledgling aspiring populist party began attracting all the wrong elements. Without getting too deep into the muck, the PPC has had to distance itself from white nationalists and other lunatics in the wake of critical media attention on more than one occasion. It was consequently difficult to win over support when the entire party was perceived, correctly, I might add, as stark-raving mad. In a single election cycle, the PPC has been largely dismissed by the electorate as something of a single-issue party, analogous to the Greens. The Green Party has the environment, and the PPC has rampant xenophobia.
The reality is that Bernier’s brand of populism and anti-globalism doesn’t have a significant audience in Canada, and the party is too toxic to successfully pivot on political issues. It’s undeniable that the nearly three-hundred thousand votes the PPC received are not nothing, but our first-past-the-post voting system means that the PPC’s dispersed support amounts to nothing. Consequently, the future of the PPC is likely to be a notorious obscurity. It’s effectively Maxime Bernier’s one-man show, but Canadian’s don’t seem to be interested in what he’s selling. There’s no doubt that Bernier’s audience, both at home and abroad, is enough for him to sustain himself financially off of his supporters. He may even have a long career ahead of him as a perennial candidate, running in every election and by-election to remind us that he’s still here. But Maxime Bernier’s career as a politician is over. Being virtually indistinguishable from its founder, the PPC won’t fare much better.