Right-wing party leader confirms he’ll run in Manitoba Tory stronghold

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This article was published 11/05/2023 (891 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier confirmed to the Free Press Thursday he will run for a federal seat in an upcoming Manitoba byelection, while disputing claims he is an opportunist looking to raise cash.

Bernier will be in Portage la Prairie Friday to officially announce he will be the party’s candidate in the Tory stronghold of Portage—Lisgar.

“I want to be in a riding where we share the same values, and fight for it,” Bernier said by phone during a stop in Thunder Bay.

The founder of the far-right PPC opposes late-term and sex-selective abortions. He wants to reopen the political debate in Canada, which has been without federal restrictions since 1988, when the Supreme Court struck down the existing law as unconstitutional; the procedure has been governed by provincial and medical regulations over the past 35 years.

Bernier, who believes he is fighting a “cultural war,” attacked gender-identity education for children and repeated his desire to slash immigration numbers and repeal the Paris climate-change accord.

He will challenge Conservative party candidate and newcomer Branden Leslie in a byelection to replace former Tory MP and interim leader Candice Bergen.

A date has not yet been set.

Leslie, who was Bergen’s campaign manager for the 2019 federal election, grew up on a farm near Portage.

The riding in southern Manitoba has been held by the Conservatives and their predecessors since its creation in 1997.

Despite being an outsider, Montreal-based Bernier believes he has a strong chance of winning.

“It will be a real campaign,” he said. “People will have two choices because I don’t believe the Liberals or the NDP or the Green Party are competitive.”

Bernier said he wanted to run in a rural riding with a francophone community.

Earlier this week, Leslie dismissed Bernier’s rumoured intentions as attempts to boost his profile and raise money for the PPC.

Leslie described Bernier, who formed the party in 2018 after resigning from the Conservatives, as an opportunist who will say anything to get attention.

Bernier dismissed the criticism.

“People will know the Maxime Bernier that is real. I will always fight for what I believe,” he said. “I know I need to prove myself (in Portage—Lisgar), and I will do that.”

Bernier, 60, will remain in Manitoba into next week, at least, to prepare for the campaign and attend court in Winnipeg. He was charged with breaching provincial COVID-19 pandemic restrictions at a rally in June 2021; his trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday.

He said he would move to Portage—Lisgar if he wins the byelection.

Bernier began eyeing the riding after PPC candidate Solomon Wiebe finished second (21 per cent) to Bergen (52 per cent) in the 2021 election.

The party had a solid showing at some polling stations in places with pockets of resistance to COVID-19 mandates.

Mary Agnes Welch, a principal with Probe Research, said the PPC may not have the same level of support in the byelection.

“I would say the PPC did so well there last time because they were riding that really visceral wave of anti-mandate sentiment that has waned a lot since then,” she wrote in an email. “And, in the meantime, the federal Tories have a new leader (Pierre Poilievre) who is doing fairly well in national polls and speaks directly to a lot of those anti-Trudeau, convoy-adjacent sentiments.

“I bet that brings many of the 10,000 PPC voters back into the Tory fold this time. On the other hand, byelections are always weird.”

Bernier believes the support for his party is still there.

He made a bold prediction, while citing the Reform Party’s major breakthrough in the 1993 federal election, which came after a 1989 byelection victory.

“I believe it can be the same for the People’s Party,” said Bernier.

In December, a Leger poll suggested 47 per cent of decided voters in Manitoba and Saskatchewan would vote Conservative, while 23 per cent would back the NDP.

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The Liberals were third at 19 per cent, followed by the PPC with nine per cent and the Green Party with three per cent.

The online survey of 1,526 Canadians did not have a margin of error because it was not considered a truly random sample.

— With files from Dean Pritchard

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.