Pugnacious visitor leaves purple marks in deep blue-rooted riding

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This article was published 16/06/2023 (837 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ROLAND — On a hot, windy day just north of Winkler, free-range kids on bikes roaming the sidewalks of this sleepy village after school stopped and stared as the purple vehicle emblazoned with the stranger’s face drove past.

A large family sitting outside — the women all in long dresses and their hair up in a bun — recognized the out-of-province visitor, welcoming him with smiles and waves.

A block away, a couple in a pickup truck pulled over to greet the man they see as the defender of their values, the one they plan to vote for in Monday’s Portage-Lisgar byelection.

“Good luck and God be with you,” Henry Dyck told People’s Party of Canada leader Max Bernier, who was campaigning door to door earlier this week in the Pembina Valley community of close to 300 people.

His “families first plan” leaflet pledges to protect kids in school from “indoctrination and sexualization at the hands of perverts,” fight the carbon tax, late-term abortion and the”evil Woke Cult” that it says is “destroying Canadian history, heritage and identity.”

Bernier makes no apologies for spreading divisive, vexatious and inflammatory misinformation.

“If you don’t like our ideas, don’t vote for us,” said the 60-year-old former Conservative cabinet minister who ran for party leader and lost narrowly in 2017 before forming his own party.

Dyck, a Roland resident, has had a PPC sticker on the back of his truck since 2021 when the far-right party candidate Solomon Wiebe finished second with 22 per cent of the vote, compared to 52 per cent for the Tory incumbent, Candice Bergen, who resigned early this year.

Nearly 8,000 votes were cast in advance polls in this riding, which has an estimated 68,454 electors. It covers 12,665 square kilometres from the RM of Macdonald on the outskirts of Winnipeg to Portage la Prairie, Winkler and Altona.

It’s seen as one of the most socially conservative ridings in Canada, and where COVID-19 vaccine mandates and public-health orders that shuttered churches during the height of the pandemic received some of the greatest pushback.

Bernier, who was arrested and fined by the RCMP a year ago in St-Pierre-Jolys for violating health restrictions, sees it as his best chance to win a seat in the House of Commons.

Dyck and his wife Samantha, who attend the Gospel Mission Church, have no trouble voting for Bernier, a francophone Quebecer whose home is in Montreal.

“In this whole area here, we have more righteous values and follow the Bible,” he told the candidate. “That’s what we want. Your party aligns as close as you can get. I don’t care what nationality you are, what language you speak — if your principles are in line with Scripture, that’s who I vote for. ”

”In this whole area here, we have more righteous values and follow the Bible.”–Henry Dyck

He said he’s not voting for Conservative candidate Branden Leslie because the federal Tories voted in 2021 to support a ban on conversion therapy, a practice aimed at changing someone’s sexual orientation.

“I’m not saying ‘push Christianity on anybody,’ but if somebody wants help, why can’t we tell them the right path and give them the right path?” said Dyck, whose children attend public school. He supports Bernier’s pledge to oppose “trans ideology” in the classroom.

“I’m afraid they’re going to get indoctrinated. We cannot allow that,” he said.

Leslie, Bergen’s former campaign manager, is running for the Conservatives, who have held the riding since it was formed in 1997. He declined an interview request from the Free Press and refused to allow one of its reporters to follow his team’s door-to-door effort.

He defeated former provincial Manitoba Tory finance minister Cameron Friesen to win the nomination in the riding, where his family owns a farm.

He has the endorsement of former Winkler mayor Martin Harder who hopes Leslie will work to heal rifts in the community. Leslie shares some platform planks with the PPC, such as fighting the carbon tax and protecting the rights of gun owners.

In Roland, a woman who opens her door to find a Conservative party leaflet there, steps outside to hear Bernier’s PPC spiel.

“We are focusing on family values,” he tells her. “Assisted suicide is more and more normal — if you’re depressed we can kill you.

“If you like our ideas, vote for us,”

The young woman says she’ll vote, but hasn’t yet decided for whom.

“You will send a strong message to Trudeau but also to (Tory Leader) Pierre Poilievre that ‘these principles are important and I want you to speak about it,’” urges Bernier.

“I will support Poilievre when he will be a real Conservative but I will shame him when he won’t. You can try me for two years and if you don’t like what I’m doing, you can vote me out in two years but that’s my commitment to you.”

”You can try me for two years and if you don’t like what I’m doing, you can vote me out in two years.”–Maxime Bernier

The PPC founder is living at the Best Western Plus in Winkler, where his campaign HQ is located at a strip mall. He got a good price for a month’s hotel stay and goes for a run every day before door-knocking across the riding and attending “kitchen meetings” of 15-30 people at homes six nights a week, he said.

If Bernier wins, he and his wife will move to the riding from Montreal. If he loses, the 60 year old vows to run again in the next federal election due in 2024.

Portage-Lisgar reminds him of his former federal riding of Beauce, which he held from 2006 to 2019. It’s also rural with a lot of farmers, he said.

“We share the same conservative values. In Beauce, it’s 99 per cent Catholic and 99 per cent French. Here also we have religious people in the south of the riding. They have strong Christian family values, like my riding in Beauce.”

One couple sipping beers on their front stoop didn’t greet him warmly but politely listened as he made his pitch.

At the other end of the street, Jacob Wall saw the purple PPC van before expressing delight when he recognized the guy on it was standing in his driveway.

Bernier cut to the chase, lamenting Canada’s “cult of death with abortion and assisted suicide and all that trans ideology.”

“There’s no trans kids — you have either a boy or a girl,” he said while Wall’s young daughter rode her bike around them.

“Do you protect the Lord’s Prayer in schools? I want my daughter to have prayers in school,” said the soft-spoken dad who is married with three children and moved to Roland in the last two years.

Bernier told him that school policies are the jurisdiction of the provinces but federally, the Criminal Code can be changed “to not allow these pornographic books in school.”

He didn’t specify the books he was alleging are porn.

“It’s too sad that a lot of people are home-schooling right now because they don’t like what they’re teaching at school,” Bernier said.

Wall told him he and his wife aren’t considering home-schooling yet.

“We’d definitely like to keep sending her — she has to have her friends. We’re happy with everybody, but the prayers are going less and less in schools.”

He said he intends to support Bernier.

“Till a month ago, I was for the Conservatives until I realized what they supported,” Wall said. “For me, that is not an option. I cannot vote against my faith.”

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Liberal candidate Kerry Smith wasn’t expecting an easy campaign in a riding where the primary target for criticism has, for years, been Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I knew it was going to be a hard run,” said the 46-year-old senior director of the Manitoba Métis Foundation.

“Not everybody is a fan, going door-to-door, but the people in this riding are kind. They’re friendly.”

Smith, who is married and has three children between the ages of 15 and 28, said the Conservative candidate hasn’t been campaigning on Tory achievements over the more than 25 years it has held the seat.

“There’s a lot of slinging insults rather than talking about what they can do for the community, or what is their success, rather than just talking about Trudeau,” said the candidate, who has lived in the riding in Starbuck, but now lives in Tyndall.

“I think it’s time we start talking about the issues.”

In 2021, the Liberals finished fourth with 11 per cent of the vote.

She said she’s heard from voters who are alarmed by the PPC platform and the party’s leader.

“They’re taking steps backwards on LGBTTQ+ and women’s rights,” said Smith. “The people I’m talking to, they can’t believe it.”

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Schoolteacher Lisa Tessier-Burch is running for the NDP; it placed third in the riding in 2021, with 13 per cent of the vote.

The 41-year-old French-immersion high school teacher works full time and is married with two daughters, ages five and eight. The Portage la Prairie resident campaigns for the New Democrats after school and on weekends, attending public gatherings and meeting with voters.

She participated in Pride events and said the riding is becoming increasingly progressive.

She felt compelled to run and be a voice for a community that’s growing and changing, she said.

“We’re seeing more and more people moving back — it’s vibrant,” she told the Free Press.

”We’re seeing more and more people moving back. It’s vibrant.”–Lisa Tessier-Burch

Her parents and in-laws live in Portage and have set down roots and she’s encouraged by the support she has received in the community after putting her name on the ballot and participating in the democratic process.

The Conservatives have taken their long-standing ownership of the riding for granted and it’s time for change, she said.

Bergen, who is managing the Manitoba Tories’ campaign for October’s provincial election, made headline-generating remarks at a Progressive Conservative youth event last month, suggesting young people — though, not her audience — were being politically disengaged or “brainwashed” at school.

Tessier-Burch said that statement was disheartening.

“I believe a lot of educators were hurt by that,” she said.

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Nicolas Geddert, 37, is running for the Green party. The last time the Greens fielded a candidate in Portage-Lisgar was 2019 when they captured five per cent of the vote.

“I’m running primarily to connect with organizers and supporters. Most of the people I’ve been talking to are asking me what the feds can do to fix things, and so much of that is what the province needs to do to fix things,” said Geddert, a Winnipeg resident who has a girlfriend, no kids and works seasonally driving for a safety sand company.

“It’s also been good to connect with issues and their people outside Winnipeg. We get big-city blindness sometimes. It’s great to see so many communities working to improve themselves across the map.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca