PEOPLE'S PARTY POPULARITY GROWS.
SUPPORTERS UNITED BY CONCERNS OVER COVID POLICIES
Priscilla Campos wasn't the sort you might have expected to find at a rally for the People's Party of Canada. She's vegan, all-organic, and went about barefoot, wearing a flowing dress and a blue jewel on her forehead. She formed a marked contrast to the older men in camouflage and the bearded young men in the crowd.
Campos, accompanied by her dog, Drifter, called for a “spiritual revolution” to unite people who have been kept apart by lockdowns and social distancing; she worried about whether or not the COVID-19 vaccines were vegan-friendly.
“I'm a freedom fighter,” she said. “The new way is about love and light and supporting one another.”
A few hundred supporters, representing a cross-section of suburban Albertans — and a few unexpected characters, too — gathered at a park in Edmonton last Saturday to hear a speech from Maxime Bernier, the People's Party leader.
The crowd represented a fairly usual selection of those you'd expect to find at a conservative rally. There were “F--k Trudeau” shirts and “I'm just a dad trying not to raise Liberals,” shirts, as well as pro-oil and gas accoutrements and the odd “Make Canada Great Again” hat. There were men and women, young and old, largely, but not exclusively, white.
Bernier's speech touched on a number of his rhetorical staples: He promised to defund the CBC and pull foreign aid funding, thereby balancing the budget; he took shots at Erin O'toole, whom he accused of being a secret Liberal, and promised to force through pipeline construction.
But he also devoted considerable time to COVID-19 public-health measures and vaccine policies, the issue that, seemingly, united those there to hear him speak, and that Bernier and many in the crowd associate with a loss of freedom.
“More and more Canadians are coming on our side because of tyranny, medical tyranny, and the vaccine passport, that will be imposed on us in every province,” Bernier said.
Before Bernier arrived, the PPC team moved through the crowd, asking people why they were at the rally. There was, of course, mention of the issues more typically associated with the party's base, such as immigration, which Bernier promises to cut, or concerns about the influence of international organizations in Canada. But, again and again, vaccines, lockdowns and mask mandates were raised. “I'm concerned about the direction society is taking,” said Paul, from Fort Saskatchewan, into the microphone. A woman from Nanaimo: “My body, my choice.”
At the start of the election the Liberal party moved quickly to make vaccination a wedge issue.
Justin Trudeau has vowed that all members of the federal public service must receive a COVID-19 vaccine or face discipline.
One woman, who said she was a federal public servant but declined to give her name, said she risks losing her job over that campaign promise. “It feels like all the other parties want to mandate the vaccines,” the woman said.
Jessica Bristol said she didn't pay much attention to politics until the pandemic, and certain rules around public health made her think twice.
“I'm here because I'm a bazillion per cent opposed to vaccine passports,” Bristol said.
Bristol said she felt strongly enough that she attended one of the protests outside the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. She said she has gotten sick whenever she's worn a mask, and prefers natural immunity to vaccinations.
“I feel like my children should have more freedom opposed to less,” she explained.
One of the kids on the blanket piped up: He hates wearing masks. So, too, did almost everyone in the crowd: The only people consistently wearing them seemed to be journalists there to cover the rally.
Bernier founded the People's Party of Canada in 2018 after he lost a Conservative leadership race to Andrew Scheer following Stephen Harper's exit. In 2019, its first election, the party received 1.6 per cent of votes, placing it well behind other small parties, such as the Greens (6.5 per cent) but well ahead of others, such as the Christian Heritage Party (0.1 per cent).
In 2021, Bernier's party has grown. According to polling aggregator 338Canada's recent analysis, the PPC could get about six per cent of the vote — double current support for the Greens and close to that of the Bloc Québécois.
The ascent seems tied to the pandemic and the unpopularity of public-health measures. Bernier, who has appeared at a number of anti-lockdown rallies over the pandemic, was arrested in June in Manitoba for violating public-health orders.
But Bernier told the National Post in an interview that there's more to his popularity. “It's not only about COVID-19,” he said. “It's about our platform.”
Contrary to most political campaigns, Bernier isn't promising voters very much, at least in terms of specific programs or funding. One man asked about electoral reform, which would make it far easier for the PPC to get a seat in Parliament — the PPC doesn't have a policy on that.
Bernier told the Post he's often asked what he will do for individual ridings and his answer is “nothing.” When one man told Bernier he couldn't afford his hearing aids, and asked what the party would do to help, Bernier explained that health care is a provincial responsibility, and that the party would turn over funding of health care to the provinces.
This laissez-faire policy, exemplified perhaps by a promise to cut equalization in order to force have-not provinces to develop their economies, has its appeal for certain voters, especially in Alberta. Dave Floyd pointed out that Bernier has been to Alberta more than any of the other party leaders. “He's trying to show people who he is,” Floyd said.
Dustin Verdonk, who tossed a Frisbee with former NDP volunteer Sean Cargin before Bernier arrived, said he's been looking for a proper conservative candidate.
“I just do the research, who stands for true conservatives and my personal rights,” Verdonk said.
Cargin, who said he moved to the right as he got older, and supported Leslyn Lewis or Derek Sloan for leadership of the Conservative party, said “it's the detest for the identity politics” that was one of the things that attracted him to Bernier.
For those concerned about vaccines and lockdowns, for those concerned about “woke” culture and Big Tech censoring Donald Trump, there was a sense that freedoms had been lost.
“People are fed up and they want to get back their freedom,” Bernier told the crowd. “We know that without freedom there's no human dignity, equality of rights and economic prosperity. And we know that freedom is the foundation of our Western civilization.”
During the Q&A session, Bernier easily handled many of the questions from the crowd, ranging from abortion (the PPC has no official position) to immigration (he promised to build a fence, not a wall, at the crossing at Roxham Road in southern Quebec between Canada and the United States) and scrapping the Indian Act (which puts Bernier in alignment with the other party leaders).
A woman falsely told him that 45,000 people have died from the COVID-19 vaccines, and was applauded when she claimed Trudeau had cancelled the tracking of adverse vaccine effects, although Health Canada is still tracking vaccine side effects. (Canada has reported 188 deaths following vaccination, but says 73 of them were unlikely to be caused by the vaccine, there was insufficient information for 71 of them, 38 are under investigation, and six were linked to blood clotting. Regardless, adverse events account for 0.027 per cent of all immunizations; serious adverse events, a classification that includes death, accounts for 0.007 per cent of all doses administered.)
“Yes, you're right, we need to know everything about these effects that are affecting people,” Bernier said.
Another woman said she's concerned about voter fraud.
While Bernier raised vague concerns about mailin ballots, he assured the crowd that Canada's electoral system can be trusted.
“I can trust, and you can trust, our electoral system,” Bernier said.
With protests against COVID-19 public-health measures growing, Bernier has tapped into a deep well of resentment about the way Canadians have had to live for the past 18 months, and fears about what the next months will look like.
Still, it's unclear whether that support will translate into any seats in the House of Commons. But what is clear is that while he's drawing from this well, he's also drawing from those who, like Jarrett Page, have been Conservatives their whole lives and are looking for something else, and see little difference between O'toole and Trudeau. “The pandemic has absolutely influenced that,” Page said.
I'M A BAZILLION PER CENT OPPOSED TO VACCINE PASSPORTS.