PPC Leader Maxime Bernier meeting supports at Riverside Park in Kamloops on April 11, 2025. (Image Credit: Michael Reeve/CFJC Today)

By Victor Kaisar

Election 2025

PPC leader Maxime Bernier makes campaign stop in Kamloops

Apr 12, 2025 | 10:34 AM

KAMLOOPS — A few dozen people were on hand at a Friday (April 11) afternoon rally at Riverside Park in Kamloops hosted by People’s Party of Canada (PPC) Leader Maxime Bernier.

The PPC leader, who has made stops in Kamloops in each of the last two federal elections in 2019 and 2021, is the first federal leader to visit the Tournament Capital during this ongoing campaign.

“My goal is to travel across the country meeting more people and I said ‘that’s a nice opportunity to be here’ because you’re right, I will be the only national leader that will be coming in this riding,” Bernier told CFJC Today.

“[I want] to show to people living in this riding that we are serious. We have great candidates and we want to have their support.”

The PPC has picked Clearwater resident Chris Enns as its candidate in Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola and Revelstoke resident Michael Henry as its candidate in Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies.

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Both Kamloops ridings are Conservative strongholds with incumbent MPs who are running for re-election. Bernier, a former Conservative MP who finished runner-up in the 2017 leadership race, also said Friday he was not worried about a vote split, adding the PPC has “very different policies” compared to his former party.

“Climate change – we will withdraw from the Paris Accord. They won’t. Trade war – we won’t do a trade war, deal. Immigration – we want to stop mass immigration, they won’t. The war in Ukraine, they want to have more war. We don’t. We want to have a peace deal over there,” Bernier said.

“On balancing the budget, they are Conservatives, they’re supposed to balance the budget, they won’t. We don’t know. [Pierre] Poilievre may say maybe in three years or in four years, but we will. So on the most important issues, they are like the Liberals.”

While the PPC has run over 300 candidates across Canada in each of the last two elections, they haven’t had an elected Member of Parliament. They did, however, increase their share of the votes from 1.6 per cent in 2019 to 4.9 per cent in 2021.

In the now-dissolved riding of Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo, the PPC finished a distant fourth with 5.7 per cent of the vote. Most opinion polls for the 2025 election have the party at between one and four per cent of the total vote.

Bernier has not been invited to next week’s leader’s debates in Montreal that will feature the Liberal’s Leader Mark Carney, Conservative’s Pierre Poilievre, the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, the Bloc Québécois’ Yves-François Blanchet, and Green Party Co-Leader Jonathan Pedneault.

Canadians will then head to the polls on April 28, with advance polling opportunities also available between April 18 and 21.

You can find more on CFJC Today’s election coverage here.

– With files from Michael Reeve

Editors note: CFJC Today will have more from Maxime Bernier’s visit to Kamloops on Monday, April 14.