PPC leader urges people not to tactically vote Tory

People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier took aim at “fake Conservatives” and urged supporters to forgo strategic voting at a rally in Winnipeg on Monday.

Bernier, 62, got a passionate response from about 100 supporters of the right-wing party at the Earl Grey Community Centre.

He spent much of his speaking time criticizing the Conservative party and its leader, Pierre Poilievre, which he described as “too afraid to speak about the real issues.”

“They say, ‘Oh, this time, don’t vote PPC because the Liberal will be in — if the Liberals are in and stay in government, it’s because we have a fake conservative party,” Bernier told cheering supporters.

“What is the goal to vote for a Conservative when they are like the Liberals? The Liberals will drive us full speed into a wall. Poilievre will do the same, at the speed limit. That’s it.”

With only one week before election day, Bernier’s visit follows stops by Prime Minister and Liberal Leader Mark Carney, Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s in Winnipeg over the last month.

Supporter Stephen Payne said he found himself drawn to the PPC after becoming disenfranchised with the Liberal party, which he described as a “self-serving, terrible, corrupt government.”

The 68-year-old said he’s not sure if Bernier and the party are ready to lead yet, and he might to “hold (his) nose and vote Conservative,” but he wanted to come hear Bernier speak and show his support.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Paul Samyn | Editor's Note

Wednesdays

A weekly dispatch from the head of the Free Press newsroom.

Sign up for Paul Samyn | Editor's Note

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

“I believe in Max, and I believe in the PPC,” he said.

“It’s going to take some time to build the party, but in every other election, I voted PPC, but this one, we need change right away.”

Bernier was a federal cabinet minister under Stephen Harper before losing his bid to lead the Conservatives to Andrew Scheer in 2017 and leaving the party; he formed the PPC in 2018. Its platforms focused on opposing climate change initiatives, “gender ideology” and diversity programming, cutting immigration numbers, defunding the CBC and re-opening the debate around access to abortion.

While tariffs, the trade war and U.S. president Donald Trump have been a focal point of the three major parties’ campaigns, Bernier was critical of counter tariffs and suggested Canada needed to focus on negotiating with the leader south of the border.

“What Trump wants to do is to make America great again, and good for him,” he said. “I want to do the same here. I want to make our country great again.”

The PPC has candidates running in all but two of Manitoba’s ridings, Brandon-Souris and Winnipeg West.

While many supporters Monday were from rural areas, others were out in support of Winnipeg South PPC candidate Johann Rempel Fehr, who said he was inspired to run for the party in the city because he’d like to see less government involvement in our daily lives.

“To me, the biggest, huge thing was seeing my kids grow up and seeing a country that has less and less freedoms, more government, especially freedom of speech,” he said.

The PPC ran 312 candidates in 2021, and while none won, the party has made considerable gains in several provinces, including Manitoba, particularly in rural ridings.

In 2019, the People’s Party of Canada’s first election, its candidates in Portage-Lisgar, Provencher and Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa received 2.6 per cent, 2.2 per cent and 1.8 per cent of the vote in their ridings, respectively.

By 2021, the PPC candidate in those same ridings received 21.6 per cent, 16.5 per cent and 10.5 per cent of all votes cast in their respective ridings.

In Portage-Lisgar, the PPC candidate received 1,169 votes in 2019, and 9,790 votes only two years later, coming in second to Conservative Candice Bergen, who had represented the riding since 2008, and garnering double the votes of the Liberal candidate at the time.

The rural riding captured attention across Canada in 2023 when Bernier ran in a byelection sparked by Bergen’s resignation.

The Quebec politician pledged to move to Portage la Prairie if he won, and during his campaign, was in court in Winnipeg for breaking public pandemic health orders in Manitoba in 2021.

He lost to Conservative candidate Branden Leslie, who received 65 per cent of the vote and is currently running as the incumbent in Portage-Lisgar.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak 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.