"There was a period — a brief period, granted — where it seemed Bernier’s party could have wrought meaningful change in conservative politics in this country. Instead, it seems the PPC has become a gong show of racial politics, embarrassing diatribes and social conservative castoffs."

Maxime Bernier, seen here speaking in Ottawa in September 2018, told iPolitics he intends to run in one of two Toronto-area byelections. (iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood)

Back in December, while researching a story about the People’s Party of Canada for the Toronto Star, my colleagues and I came across a fellow named Alain Deng. A resident of Burnaby, B.C., Deng has a history of guttural anti-Muslim rhetoric on social media. Normally I wouldn’t give a toss about such hateful, grammatically-challenged missives — “Muslim is terrible and trouble maker in any where of this planet” he opined in January 2018 — except that, according to a PPC Facebook page, Deng was a member of the party’s Burnaby South riding association.

Or was he? When I emailed PPC spokesperson Martin Masse, he was categorical: Deng certainly was not. “He is not in our database,” Masse wrote in an email. I took him at his word and filed the ensuing piece, in which among other things my colleagues and I catalogued the rather prominent anti-Muslim strain within the party. But not Deng! He was but a hanger-on, according to Masse.

And yet this assertion, in the words of Angelo Isidorou, was “a big fat lie.”

Isidorou is a former PPC executive who has since become an outspoken critic of the party. Attracted to the libertarian, free speech planks espoused by the party and its founder/leader, former Conservative MP Maxime Bernier, Isidorou became disillusioned with the PPC for failing to disavow with what he called “the crazies” who had attached themselves to the party. Among them: Alain Deng, whom Isidorou confirmed was part of the Burnaby South riding association. He was only let go last December, Isidorou said, when I emailed the riding executive regarding Deng’s many bon mots, including his (since-deleted) tweeted contention that federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen should “swim” and/or otherwise go “back to Somalia.” (I asked Masse via email about the apparent discrepancy between his words and the truth. He didn’t respond.)

In any event, Deng’s time in the PPC doghouse was short lived; as Isidorou pointed out to me, the man who once called Islam a “disgusting religion” is now the PPC candidate for the riding of Vancouver South. (I twice emailed Deng for comment, once in December and once this week. He didn’t respond.)

But again: who cares about a demonstrable internet troll who has exactly zero chance of winning Vancouver South?

Because Deng is illustrative of how the PPC has gone from upstart party to potential threat to a veritable clown car in less than a year. It’s also indicative of a lost opportunity to realign the rightward flank of this country’s political spectrum at the exact moment when such things are de rigueur here and beyond. Far from being an isolated case, it seems loud, hateful and fundamentally unelectable elements within the party have taken over. “We always thought we would outnumber the crazies. Now the crazies outnumber everyone else,” Isidorou says now.

To be sure, attracting such types is inevitable in a libertarian-minded party. “When I came to the PPC, the overall ethos was, ‘Look, it’s a new party and it’s going to attract people who are problematic.’ But with proper policies, a constitution, a national board, we would ice the crazies out,” Isidorou says.

Today, less than 250 days after Bernier officially registered the PPC in a hail of Twitter invective, the party has no constitution, no national board and little in the way of policies. Instead, it has Bernier and Masse — who, according to Isidorou, is largely responsible for the surreal, malignant Twitter stream appearing under Bernier’s name.

The policy vacuum has instead been filled with equal parts white nationalists and social conservatives. The former includes the hosts of The Ensign Hour, a podcast whose hosts pine for a “European homeland.” Former PPC candidate Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, meanwhile, is the party’s most prominent social conservative — a movement that by definition is anathema to Bernier’s own brand of libertarianism. “There is a giant civil war in the PPC between the libertarians like Max and the social conservatives,” Isidorou says. “Max knows it’s going on, he just doesn’t give a shit.”

It may sound hilarious now, but the PPC could well have been a going concern in the upcoming election. Doug Ford in Ontario and Jason Kenney in Alberta are two very recent examples of how strong personalities have co-opted public disaffection to upend the political class in their respective provinces. Bernier’s rise late last summer coincided with a similar rise in discontent with both Trudeau’s Liberals and the Conservative party’s ability to defeat them. Unimpressed by Conservative Andrew Scheer’s timidity, Isidorou’s ilk — young, motivated and, like Bernier, alarmed at what they see as an erosion of free speech in the country — are political orphans. Seemingly, the PPC was a natural home.

There was a period — a brief period, granted — where it seemed Bernier’s party could have wrought meaningful change in conservative politics in this country. Instead, it seems the PPC has become a gong show of racial politics, embarrassing diatribes and social conservative castoffs. And there’s more gong show to come. “Alain Deng is going to be the tip of the iceberg,” says Isidorou. “The crazies are now completely in control.”

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.