Despite winning no seats in the election the People’s Party will continue to exist, but will have to do so without leader Maxime Bernier’s top advisor, who orchestrated the party’s direction behind-the-scenes, the party told supporters in its first fundraising email since the campaign.

“The struggle for a better society never ends. This was just the start. We’re here to stay,” the party fundraising email sent Thursday said.

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Aside from pledging to “do better next time” the party does not mention the next election or how long it plans to operate.

Executive director Johanne Mennie will also be leaving the party, the email also says. Mennie, who Bernier was often seen attached at the hip to at national events, and who had been one of its top organizers and spokespeople since close to its inception, will be retiring.

While the email says that Mennie was able to accomplish “some truly impressive goals”, it also says the election results were “obviously disappointing for the People’s Party.”

Former Conservative leadership frontrunner Maxime Bernier dramatically split from the Tories to start the People’s Party about 14 months before the federal election. Despite fielding around 320 candidates on election day and landing a spot amongst the other major party leaders in the Official Leaders’ Debates not even Bernier could win his seat on Oct. 21.

“The breakthrough we hoped for did not materialize and our leader lost his seat in Beauce,” the email continues.

Bernier finished second by more than 6,000 votes in Beauce to Conservative Richard Lehoux, who was a longtime mayor in the region and stood in opposition to Bernier’s signature promise to end Canada’s supply management system (Lehoux is also dairy farmer himself).

In total, the People’s Party received slightly below 300,000 votes across Canada (just over 1.5 per cent of the popular vote), a total that was less than five per cent of what the Conservatives received. In the newsletter sent Thursday, the People’s Party claims their vote-total was impacted by Canadians voting strategically to attempt to defeat Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. The People’s Party also notes that it took the Green Party six elections and 20 years to record more than that percentage of the popular support, but doesn’t mention that the Greens more than doubled the percentage the People’s Party received the first time it ran more than 300 candidates.

As well as losing Mennie to retirement, the People’s Party is also losing its national coordinator Caleb Voskamp and its digital solutions coordinator Yanick Villeneuve.

The party notes that three of its junior staff will continue to work at the People’s Party headquarters full-time and that its chief agent Christian Roy and director of policy and party spokesperson Martin Masse will stay in their positions. Marie-Claude Godue and Jacques Grenier will also continue to be linked to the party, but the email sent on Thursday does not elaborate to what degree.

It’s difficult to assess what impact – if any – the People’s Party had in the 2019 federal election, aside from, perhaps, better exposing the criteria for how leaders qualify for the debates. iPolitics assessed the election results and determined that if every People’s Party voter had instead voted for the mainstream right-wing party, the Conservatives, the Tories would have won seven more seats and weakened the Liberals seat count enough to complicate what appears to be a minority government with a significant amount of power. However, a former Tory strategist was adamant that its impossible to say how many People’s Party voters would have voted for the Conservatives, had Bernier’s party not been an option.

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The People’s Party also shared details about Bernier’s first high-profile public appearance since the election; the party leader will be a keynote speaker at a conference about Western separatism on Nov. 16. The email says Bernier will talk about “the political challenge of fixing Canada.”

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