PPC growth could devastate CPC fortunes
Could Canada’s united and national conservative movement go the way of the dodo?
Poll after poll has shown the race for Prime Minister is tight. With only two days left to court voters, that is a severe problem for the incumbent Liberals in search of another mandate who, after years of scandal, have pushed COVID-exhausted citizens back to the voting box.
But while voters appear unlikely to reward the Liberals for their poor governance and selfish electioneering, another storyline is forming. Underneath the neck-to-neck competition between Canada's two main parties are the growing number of voters supporting the People's Party of Canada (PPC) under leader Maxime Bernier.
To date, polls have placed Bernier between 3 per cent and 11.7 per cent. That gives him a far higher level of national support than the Greens and, in a lot of polls, the Bloc Quebecois, making the PPC Canada's fourth-largest party (in support, not seats).
The polls themselves don’t do justice to how rapidly these numbers have grown and how much broader the Bernier base has become. Recent campaign photos, while certainly cherry-picked by the PPC for maximum impact, display an energy among the party’s followers that is comparable to early Trump or Bernie rallies. No other leader is drawing crowds like this.
Given the PPC’s rapid growth, we have to wonder what structural changes may be in store for Canada’s political landscape.
In terms of Monday’s election, even if the PPC finishes with 7 per cent or more of the popular vote, surpassing the Bloc, it may end up with only a single seat (Maxime Bernier’s), or it may end up with none. This horrendous vote-to-seat ratio is due to the People's Party’s support being inefficient: it is spread rather thinly across the country, without any of the strong regional concentration that gains seats (the Bloc, with its 7 per cent of the vote, all of it concentrated in Quebec, could wind up with thirty seats).
The real impact of the PPC won’t be in the seats it gains but in its impact on the right-wing vote in Canada. There are two ways to look at it.
Some see Bernier’s support thinning the ranks of the Conservative Party, which is neck-and-neck with the Liberals going into the final weekend of the campaign. To the extent that Bernier succeeds, then, he may be helping to elect Trudeau.
At the same time, the PPC seems to be pulling previously untapped voters into its tent, as well as the odd former Liberal, New Democrat, or Green, expanding the voter pool for right-wing politics generally.
The truth lies somewhere in between.
The PPC will cost the CPC seats. There is no question that some of its support comes from the conservative base. With Bernier running on a small-c conservative platform while CPC leader Erin O’Toole has positioned himself firmly in the centre, there is no way around it. Yet, the appeal of the PPC is broader than its conservatism. It has become the home for anti-establishment voters. Bernier is campaigning as an outsider to Ottawa’s familiar politics, describing all the other leaders as minor variations on Canada’s liberal consensus, and he has garnered the attention of agitated voters across party lines.
That brings us to the real potential of Canada's populist party, which will likely continue to grow in future elections. Whether a Liberal or Conservative is in charge, COVID and its run-on implications, and a host of other security issues, will continue to be a factor in politics for years to come. Given continued COVID governance, there will be ample space for the PPC to maintain national relevance, primarily due to agreement among all other major parties when it comes to handling the pandemic.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the PPC could secure a serious regional foothold in the west. Already, polls have shown the PPC gaining disproportionate growth in provinces such as Alberta. If those gains hold, or if Bernier can build on them, he’ll put pressure not only on the federal Conservative party but on Conservative governments at the provincial level, which have been unable to revive previous levels of prosperity in their jurisdiction.
The western base of Canadian conservatism has historically supported upstart movements. The key example is the Reform Party, which gained popular support after Brian Mulroney's victory in the 1984 election, and his failure to hold the support of his party’s western base. Provincially, the Wild Rose party in Alberta plays much the same role.
When you put Bernier’s access to a national base of anti-establishment voters together with a strong regional base, it’s not difficult to imagine him making big trouble for the CPC in future elections. It’s not beyond the pale to think the PPC, like Reform before it, could decimate the incumbent conservative party.
That’s not to say any of this is inevitable. The CPC is an independent actor and could very well shift its policies to stop the burgeoning populist movement, perhaps following the playbook of Boris Johnson’s governing Conservatives in the UK.
The choice is with the CPC leadership.
Win, evolve, or face the eventual re-splitting of Canada's national and united conservative movement.