In no-change election, PPC gained ground

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This article was published 23/09/2021 (1498 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was an election that changed very little. “Much ado about nothing,” according to Angus Reid. “A 600-million-dollar cabinet shuffle,” opined Chantal Hébert of the Toronto Star.

On Monday, Canadians went to the polls and not much changed in terms of who is sitting in the House of Commons. We still have a Liberal minority government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who may want to start dusting off his resumé.

But there are some interesting numbers lurking in the results produced by our the first-past-the-post system and its winner-takes-all outcome. Yes, the Liberals and Conservatives were very close in terms of popular support, but on the Prairies, there’s a Québécois leader who suddenly has become very popular. So popular, in fact, he’s in a virtual tie with the NDP in terms of support.

People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier — or “Mad Max,” as he’s been dubbed — has pulled off what the Green Party has been trying to do for more than a decade. He’s managed to make major inroads across the country in growing support, and his brand of libertarian, pro-oil and gas, pro-gun, anti-vax rhetoric has resonated in the West much like Donald Trump’s confrontational style did in the U.S. region known as the Rust Belt.

In an election-night interview, Bernier was ebullient: “This is not just a political party. This is a movement. It is an ideological revolution that we are starting now.” But when you check the talking points of the “revolution” outlined on the party’s website, they’re full of canards that have a Trumpian ring.

The numbers are sobering. In national support, the PPC came in fifth, behind the Bloc and ahead of the Greens, with just over five per cent of support. In Portage Lisgar, Conservative Candice Bergen won handily, but PPC candidate Solomon Wiebe came in second with more than 20 per cent of the vote. In Provencher, PPC candidate Noel Gautron came in came in third to Conservative Ted Falk, in a virtual tie with Liberal Trevor Kirczenow with slightly more than 16 per cent.

The riding of Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley was hotly contested, with no winner being declared until the mail-in votes were tallied. But there’s no doubt incumbent Conservative Marty Morantz’s chances were affected by the presence of the PPC, as candidate Angela Van Hussen bled off almost four per cent of the right-leaning vote. In a tight election, every vote counts.

Consider what happened in Edmonton Griesbach, a riding bombastic former city councillor Kerry Diotte had held as a Conservative since 2015. He lost to NDP Blake Desjarlais, who will be Alberta’s only Indigenous MP and is also believed to be Canada’s first openly two-spirited MP. The margin of victory was less than three per cent of the overall vote; PPC candidate Thomas Matty attracted more than six per cent.

Across the Prairies, the PPC garnered about seven per cent of the popular vote, and in such places as Red Deer, Westlock, Fort McMurray in Alberta — places where men and women work with their hands and their backs and worry these days about making their mortgages — the support ranged from 12 to 13 per cent. In hardcore Conservative country, Mad Max — a Quebecer— is the one making inroads.

What’s the draw? Some pundits suggest the minute Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole waffled on gun control, Bernier’s support grew. One of the major PPC platform promises is to repeal the Firearms Act and replace it with legislation that will target criminals instead of law-abiding gun owners. The PPC’s stated belief that gun ownership is part of Canada’s culture and tradition sounds eerily like something imported from the American gun-control debate.

The PPC also found support from those who are against public-health restrictions. The party website includes such misinformation as “Lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, and other authoritarian sanitary measures have not had any noticeable effect on the course of the pandemic.” It’s total poppycock, of course, but it feeds into the audience that supports the party.

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The final pillar that garnered the PPC support on the Prairies is its climate-change denial stance, and its support of the construction of pipelines and expansion of the oil and gas industry.

In other words, it’s the economy at all costs, damn the consequences and full speed ahead, the right to bear arms but the right to refuse to bare arms (for vaccines), even though in Canada gun ownership has never part of the discussion of our rights or part of our constitution. The party with the purple logo has definite shades of Trumpish pumpkin orange.

Starting to get worried yet? Let’s hope the ideology Bernier is spouting is just a response to a pandemic election call, and not a more widespread infection that needs to be excised like an 1812 invasion.

Shannon Sampert is a Winnipeg-based political scientist and the former politics and perspectives editor of the Winnipeg Free Press.

shannon@mediadiva.ca