Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced four federal byelections set to take place June 19, with political analysts predicting no incumbent party will lose its seat.
They may have spoken too soon.
In the Manitoba riding of Winnipeg South Centre, Liberal candidate Ben Carr is looking to win the seat last held by his father, long-time MP and former cabinet minister Jim Carr, who died of cancer in December.
Southern Manitoba’s riding in Portage-Lisgar is vacant after Conservative MP and former interim party leader Candice Bergen resigned in February.
The Ontario riding of Oxford riding was left vacant after Conservative MP Dave MacKenzie stepped down in January.
And, in March, Liberal MP, former cabinet minister and former astronaut Marc Garneau resigned from his riding in Quebec’s Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount after 15 years in politics.
There may be one riding, however, where the party’s chosen candidate fails to come through—Portage-Lisgar, forever an uber-conservative riding that has a curious option in play.
Bernier says he will run in what he predicts will be a “two-horse race” for the rural Manitoba seat.
The People’s Party of Canada (PPC) leader—aka Mad Max—says the vote in Portage-Lisgar will be a choice between him or a man he called a fake conservative.
If anything, it will be interesting.
In the last federal election, Bergen won handily, as expected, with 52.52% of the vote, having represented the riding since 2008.
But the PPC candidate came a strong and respectable second.
Prior to Bergen, it was Conservative Brian Pallister who represented Portage-Lisgar before going on to be elected the premier of Manitoba and, prior to that, it was the Reform party under Jake Hoeppner.
So its conservative credentials are strong.
Earlier this month, and with Bergen gone, Conservative Party members nominated Branden Leslie, a former Conservative campaign manager in the riding, as their candidate.
Bernier, meanwhile, held several roles in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, including leading the industry and foreign affairs ministries.
He quit the Conservative Party in 2018 after losing its 2017 leadership contest to Andrew Scheer.
After forming his own party, Bernier ran in his former seat of Beauce, Que., in the 2019 and 2021 elections, losing both times to a Conservative candidate.
Bernier made his first local pitch in his bid to become the MP for Portage—Lisgar, with the Quebec politician telling a Manitoba gathering that society has been “overtaken by evil” and flooded with “pervert ideas.”
Among talking points ranging from the “radical left” to “cultural Marxism,” Bernier promised he would come out on top of what he called a “two-horse race between the People’s Party and the fake Conservative party” in the upcoming byelection in the Tory stronghold riding.
“We are living in a completely different society, one overtaken by evil,” Bernier told a crowd of around 80 people Friday morning in a Portage la Prairie hotel.
“The worst part of that is as these pervert ideas are being pushed everywhere in Canada, there is not a single MP fighting against these in the House of Commons.”
Bernier’s PPC is a right-wing party that campaigns on cutting immigration numbers, censoring gender and sexuality education for children, reopening the debate on abortion laws, and defunding the CBC.
The presumptive front-runner in the byelection, of course, is Leslie, who beat out former MLA Cameron Friesen for the spot. Leslie, who grew up on a farm near Portage, ran a “pro freedom” intra-party campaign that criticized Friesen’s part in Covid-19 lockdowns and mask mandates.
Bernier said Friday he wasn’t worried about Leslie taking votes from people who share the pair’s ideological values.
“If he’s elected, when he’ll be in Ottawa, he will be silent, like the Conservative Party of Canada — the Conservative Party of Canada was nowhere to be seen during the COVID hysteria,” he said.
Bernier said plans to stay in Portage for the entirety of the byelection campaign period, and will move to the area if he wins. No matter the result, he would continue to lead the PPC, he said.
His hotel speech earned him a standing ovation.
