A Radical Right-Wing Failure in Canada: The People’s Party in the 2019 Federal Election Charles Buck Department of Political Science, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON Canada. Faculty supervisor: Dr. Edward A. Koning. For correspondence, please email:
[email protected]. Abstract This article is a quantitative investigation into why Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC), a radical right-wing party (RRP), failed to succeed in the 2019 Canadian federal election. Canada has not witnessed the electoral breakthrough of such a party. I argue the failure of the PPC was the result of a mixture of the stabilization of immigrant inflows and the softening of anti-immigrant sentiment. More favourable conditions for the PPC, including extensive media coverage and increasing support for populist and mildly authoritarian sentiment, may have been necessary, but were not sufficient to allow for an RRP breakthrough. RRPs are unlikely to succeed in Canada as long as the immigration rate remains predictable and Canadians continue to hold favourable views towards immigrants. Keywords: radical right-wing, far-right, anti-immigration, populism, Canadian politics, People’s Party of Canada Introduction The electoral support of radical right-wing parties 2019, winning zero seats and taking only 1.64% of the popular (RRPs)1 has risen dramatically over the last few decades.2 This vote. Why did it fail in Canada’s 2019 election, in contrast to trend is particularly acute in Western Europe. So far, Canada so many RRPs in Europe, and despite the anticipation of so has been one of the few industrialized liberal democracies that many political observers? My research will answer this has not seen the establishment of a successful RRP.3 question by investigating the viability of RRPs in Canada in Following his resignation from the Conservative Party of general, and Bernier’s People’s Party and its failure in the Canada, Maxime Bernier formed the People’s Party of Canada 2019 federal election in particular.