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It’s hard to say what Maxime Bernier thinks he’s going to accomplish with his new party, revealed on Friday as the People’s Party of Canada.

Will it be just a flash-in-the-pan fringe party? Will he successfully field a slate of 338 candidates in new year’s federal election, and even win seats?

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The 1988, federal campaign saw Preston Manning’s Reform Party appear on the ballot but fail to win a single seat. The next time around in 1993 Reform won 52 seats and won Official Opposition status in 1997 by electing 60 MPs.

Things were very different then. Manning’s grievance with the federal Progressive Conservatives, Brian Mulroney and pretty much everyone else in Ottawa was that they were too focused on Quebec and they took the West for granted.

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Bernier’s argument is a very different one. “I have come to realize over the past year that this party is too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed,” he said on Aug. 23 when announcing his resignation from the Conservative Party of Canada.