(Bloomberg) -- Justin Trudeau’s bid for a third term in Canada appears to be getting a boost from a right-wing splinter party that’s against vaccine mandates and may be peeling votes away from the prime minister’s Conservative rival.
The People’s Party of Canada, led by former Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier, has nearly 7% support in the latest Nanos Research Group survey. The poll gives Trudeau’s Liberals about 33% support compared to 30% for the Tories under Leader Erin O’Toole, with one week until election day.
Launched in 2018 after Bernier lost a race to lead the Conservative Party, the PPC has railed against Covid-19 restrictions and Trudeau’s pre-election decision to require vaccination for workers in the federal government and industries it regulates, such as airlines and railways. The vaccine mandate also applies to passengers on airlines and interprovincial trains.
Trudeau was statistically tied with O’Toole after a combative televised debate on Thursday night, in which the prime minister’s record in government and motivation for triggering the election were attacked from all sides. But a recent Conservative decline in polls coincides with gains by the PPC.
Bernier ran in the 2019 election on an anti-immigration, climate-skeptic platform. He was defeated in his own district and the PPC earned less than 2% of the vote nationally.
If the latest polling numbers hold through the last week of the campaign, Canada is facing another minority parliament in which the government needs the support of opposition members to pass legislation. Trudeau had hoped to parlay his handling of the pandemic into a majority victory on Sept. 20.
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