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.
People’s Party leader brings message to Windsor, Ont., crowd
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.
