While the usual suspects are gathering for the opening of the new Parliament, let’s take a few moments to reflect, if counter-intuitively, on a party that isn’t invited to the capital this week.
It is the People’s Party of Canada, led by former Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier. The PPC is an under-reported story, its prowess in September’s election largely unacknowledged. Yet it was the only one of six national parties to gain ground at the polls. While the Green Party vote collapsed and the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois straight-lined, the PPC, fighting its second election since its creation in 2018, trebled its share of the popular vote, to 5 per cent.
A small number, easy to overlook, although enough to affect the outcomes in some ridings. And it is worth noting that the populist PPC made gains in every province, including Ontario. It won twice as many votes nationally as the Green Party did, but elected no members while the beleaguered Greens managed to take two seats.
To look at it another way, in September, the People’s Party won three times as many votes as an earlier grievance-fueled party, Preston Manning’s fledgling Reform Party, won in 1988. One election later, in 1993, Reform made its breakthrough, electing 50 MPs; in 1997, it became the official opposition (to Jean Chrétien’s Liberals). Over the next six years, Reform became the Canadian Alliance, gobbled up the remains of the Progressive Conservative party, and emerged as today’s Conservative Party of Canada.
No one is predicting history will repeat itself. The People’s Party – its supporters a mixed bag of disillusioned Conservatives, libertarians, hard-right ideologues, freedom-of-conscience advocates, climate change deniers, anti-abortionists, death-penalty supporters, conspiracy theorists, and a diversity of other kooks, including some who insist that little green men from outer space are roaming our planet – is not to everyone’s taste. But there are similarities to the rise of Reform.
Last week, the Environics Institute published an analysis of PPC voters in “The Conversation,” an on-line network that distributes research reports.
“At first glance …PPC voters have the profile many would expect,” the analysis says. “They’re dissatisfied with the way things are going in our country today, feel the economy is getting weaker, think there are too many immigrants coming to Canada who don’t adopt the country’s values and hold a favourable opinion of the United States.
“Yet these opinions do not really set them apart. Most Conservative Party supporters also hold these views. What does distinguish current PPC voters is their views on the COVID-19 pandemic, and specifically on the issue of vaccination, vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.”
Asked what they saw as the country’s most important problem, Liberals and Conservatives replied COVID-19, while NDP, Bloc and Green voters said climate change. “But for PPC supporters, the No. 1 issue was the loss of freedom stemming from vaccine mandates — a concern barely mentioned by anyone who supported other parties,” Environics said.
There, in a nutshell, is Erin O’Toole’s dilemma. The Conservative leader knows most Canadians, including Tories, support mandatory vaccination. He says that he, too, supports it. But he wants to prevent further hemorrhaging to the PPC. So he equivocates. He agrees that all members of Parliament should be vaccinated, but – throwing a bone to vaccine skeptics in his own ranks – he won’t insist that all Conservative MPs get the jab.
His equivocation hurts him in two ways. It tells vaxx resisters that they are not welcome in the O’Toole party. And it feeds the perception among mainstream Conservatives that O’Toole is a weak leader, unsure of himself, a bit desperate and too compromised to carry them to victory.
The People’s Party may be unseen on the Hill this week, but its influence is felt.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. His new book, Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World, co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald, has just been published. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com or on twitter @GeoffinGalt.