Poilievre tries to head off PPC vote as Bernier bets on social conservatives
CTV
Pierre Poilievre is off to Manitoba to rally Conservative supporters ahead of a byelection that Maxime Bernier is hoping will send him back to Parliament. The far-right People's Party of Canada leader lost his Quebec seat in the 2019 federal vote and lost again in the 2021 election.
Pierre Poilievre is off to Manitoba to rally Conservative supporters ahead of a byelection that Maxime Bernier is hoping will send him back to Parliament.
The far-right People's Party of Canada leader lost his Quebec seat in the 2019 federal vote and lost again in the 2021 election.
The riding of Portage--Lisgar came up for grabs after longtime Conservative MP Candice Bergen, who served as the party's interim leader before Poilievre took over, decided to resign. Bernier will test his luck in the rural Manitoba riding that delivered his fledging party its best result in 2021, with slightly more than 20 per cent of the vote.
Numbers like that spooked Conservative MPs, especially those in the West who saw their typically rock-solid support slipping to a more populist party.
Bernier stood vehemently against COVID-19 health restrictions, while then-Tory leader Erin O'Toole struggled to strike a position on vaccine mandates that satisfied anyone the party's base.
Now with Poilievre at the helm, the federal Conservatives are facing a rematch and supporters are looking for a victory that quashes the idea that the PPC poses a real threat.
Poilievre plans to host a "special meet and greet" rally Friday evening in Winkler, a city roughly an hour and a half south of Winnipeg. MPs have also visited the area, including House leader Andrew Scheer, whose razor-thin defeat of Bernier in the Conservatives' 2017 leadership race paved the way for the former Quebec MP to strike out on his own.
