“It must be men’s night,” Louise Boehler jokes.

The veteran campaign staffer is watching her candidate introduce herself to table after table of silver-haired gentlemen in the food court of Etobicoke’s Albion Centre mall.

Boehler’s rookie charge greets all the faces at a high-top table opposite the Subway with the same line she’ll use repeatedly out canvassing for the next hour or so: “Hello, I’m Renata Ford. I’m running to be your next MP,” she says, handing a folded flyer to each man. “If you have any problems, call me.”

One of the men, 72-year-old Fritz Shand, opens the handout and, moments later, grins with a flash of recognition: “That’s her?” he asks a friend, pointing to a photo of Ford next to her late husband, Rob.

“He’s a good man,” he says, echoing an opinion heard from many seniors at the mall on this rainy Wednesday afternoon.

It can seem like the only people who matter in a campaign are the party leaders, but whatever success Renata Ford has in the race, it will be because she was able to convince voters to recall their fondness for Rob, not necessarily because they have any particular feelings for Maxime Bernier and the far-right People’s Party of Canada. Indeed, most here haven’t heard of it.

“The PC party?” a man in a gathering of Syrian Christians asks in deliberate English, confusing the blue “PPC” on the front of Ford’s flyer for the logo of the provincial Progressive Conservatives, led by her brother-in-law, Premier Doug Ford.

The north end of Etobicoke was Rob’s old city ward. Doug, with whom Renata has said she is not on speaking terms, represents the provincial riding. Her nephew, Michael, is the current councillor.

But even with that family legacy, Renata Ford’s odds to win the diverse Toronto riding of Etobicoke North appear to be vanishingly slim.

The website 338Canada projects her to finish with around 12 per cent of the vote, a distant third behind Liberal incumbent and cabinet minister Kirsty Duncan and Conservative Sarabjit Kaur. (Duncan has a greater than 99-per-cent chance to hold the seat, the website says.)

Still, despite those odds, the fringe People’s Party is getting its biggest moment in the national spotlight Monday night in part because Renata Ford’s odds are not quite entirely off the board.

At the official English-language debate, Maxime Bernier will take the stage with Liberal Justin Trudeau, Conservative Andrew Scheer, New Democrat Jagmeet Singh, Green Elizabeth May and Yves-François Blanchet, the leader of the Bloc Québécois.

It’s a chance for the People’s Party leader to present his platform to the nation in a contrast to five rivals who strongly disagree with many of his core ideas.

Bernier is calling for an end to “official multiculturalism”; he wants Canada to accept between 200,000 and 250,000 fewer immigrants each year; he wants to repeal the Firearms Act and replace it with new laws more favourable to gun owners; and he rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is an urgent man-made crisis — all positions far to the right of his rivals.

These ideas have not found much support so far. The People’s Party has polled consistently between two and three per cent nationally.

But with a strong performance, Bernier has the “potential to tap into many concerns, fears, and some colossal misperceptions that voters have” particularly about immigration, said Shachi Kurl, the executive director of the Angus Reid Institute.

It was only last month that Bernier was controversially invited to both official debates. That came after the commission running them found his party has a “legitimate” chance to elect another MP — among the hopefuls with a chance: Renata Ford.

But what does the word “legitimate” actually mean in a federal election campaign?

To decide, the Leaders’ Debates Commission, found the lowest winning vote share in the last five elections: 26.7 per cent, won by Conservative Brad Trost in Saskatoon-Humboldt in 2004.

On that precedent, debate commissioner and former governor-general David Johnston concluded that “where more than one of four voters in a riding considers voting for a party, that party has a reasonable chance to elect its candidate.”

Next, the commission asked EKOS Research to test whether any among the People’s Party’s four strongest candidates had a chance to win more than about one in four voters. (The commission took for granted that Bernier has a realistic chance to hold his riding of Beauce.)

EKOS found the party easily surpassed the one-in-four threshold of a “legitimate chance” in two ridings, including Ford’s at 30 per cent support.

But wait: How does that square with the fact Ford is projected to finish a distant third?

Frank Graves, the founder and CEO of EKOS Research, cautions that the polls don’t suggest the People’s Party is likely to win any of those races — far from it — rather they showed you “can’t rule out the chance within the realm of plausibility.”

The chance of that outcome is “not like a meteor that might land in my backyard,” he said, pointing to how large numbers of Quebec voters changed their minds late in 2015.

Can the People’s Party win two seats? “I’ve seen stranger things,” the veteran pollster said.

Others are even less bullish:

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“I’d be surprised if they even won Beauce,” said Joseph Angolano, vice-president of Mainstreet Research, noting that his polls show Bernier is “life and death” to win his seat.

As for Etobicoke North: “They’re not going to win that one,” said Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum Research. Said Angolano: “I’d be very surprised if that seat was anything other than Liberal.”

Renata Ford’s campaign flyer notably omits mention of the pledge to slash immigration.

Asked why, she argues a slight contradiction: “We’re for immigration,” she says. “People that bring value — we encourage it, we want more of that. But when we see the people are suffering, we need to help the people here in Canada first.”

The candidate appears more comfortable speaking to local politics, and in the entryway of a Toronto Community Housing tower for seniors on Kendleton Drive, the local issue is the fact that the electricity is out.

According to a notice on the glass wall next to the door, the power is off for repairs from 8:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. both Wednesday and Thursday.

“Two whole days!” Ford says. “I don’t know seniors who can go without power.”

One woman by the elevators hears the Ford name and first makes the connection to Doug — “Are you kicking out Ford?” she asks the candidate. “He needs to be kicked out.”

Not exactly, Renata Ford says, explaining that she’s running against the Liberal candidate, not the premier, and that Rob was her husband.

“Oh, your husband died,” the woman says, remembering. “He was so good,” she says.

Watching Renata canvassing is like seeing her husband in the early years, a bit before he really got the hang of being a politician, says Boehler, who worked on both of Rob’s mayoral campaigns.

At the next tower over on Kendleton Drive, Ford and Boehler leave flyers in the common area, then ask the superintendent when’s a good time to come back with coffee and doughnuts for the residents.

With that, their time is up; they have to go to the printer before it closes.

Boehler explains: Their literature says it’s approved by the “CFO” for the campaign when it’s supposed to refer to the “official agent.”

The next run needs to be fixed.

The debates are being produced by a partnership of media outlets, including the Toronto Star. The official French-language debate is Thursday.

Ed Tubb is an assignment editor and a contributor to the Star's coverage of the 2019 federal election. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @edtubb

Read more about: