Following the 2021 General Election results, PPC Leader Maxime Bernier now qualifies for the next election’s leadership debates.
According to the Leaders’ Debates Commission, there are three criteria a party must meet to be invited to the leadership debates.
A party must have an MP representing them in the House of Commons to meet the first criteria. To meet the second, a party must win at least 4 per cent of the valid votes cast in the most recent general election. And to meet the third, a party must receive 4 per cent of national support determined by polls five days after the general election is called.
While the PPC failed to meet the first and third criteria, they have met the second — assuming no changes are made to the criteria for participation before the next election.
Though it should be noted that following the announcement of Trudeau’s snap election, the PPC skyrocketed in the polls, at times reaching 10 per cent in popular support or higher. However, it turns out that the Debate Commission decides which polls to use when calculating national support and may have skewed results just enough to ensure Bernier did not make an appearance.
At the time of writing, the PPC has 5.1 per cent of the national vote, with few votes remaining and no significant changes to this number expected.
Notably, this is more than double what the Green Party received in votes, despite the Green Party being invited to the debate and winning two seats.
Regardless, though Bernier was absent from this year’s debates, he will now be able to appear at the next set of debates and finally have his voice heard in front of the biggest audience.
Thank you so much to the purple army!
We made history today. We more than tripled our total vote.
We are the only real opposition party. We will continue to fight against the rise of authoritarianism and for freedom!
— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) September 21, 2021
This development should bode well for Canada’s new alternative, which was repeatedly sidelined by many mainstream media sources throughout the campaign. Indeed, they still made headway, rising by 3.3 per cent in only two years.
The phenomenal rise of PPC is the big surprise of this campaign. But see these tweets from the lying mainstream media this morning. They’re still pretending we don’t exist. One more reason to #VotePPC. pic.twitter.com/fHcLzOSJxx
— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) September 20, 2021
With the PPC making huge strides and now qualifying for the debates ahead of the next election, the only question that remains is whether Bernier can maintain the historic support he attained this election season.
