Prince Albert candidate Kelly Day poses with People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier during his visit to the city Aug.1. (Michael Joel-Hansen/paNOW Staff)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

fringe or mainstream?

Local PPC candidate welcomes leader’s invite to debates

Sep 17, 2019 | 5:12 PM

The Prince Albert candidate for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) has responded to the news that party leader Maxime Bernier will be allowed into next month’s leadership debates.

One of the debates will be in English while the other will be in French. The news the PPC leader is being invited to take part has been met with a positive response by the party’s candidate for the riding of Prince Albert, Kelly Day.

“I am personally quite ecstatic that he’s been invited. Maxime has a wonderful way with words and we do need to get our wonderful common sense platform out to the masses in Canada,” she said.

Day said having Bernier in the debate will bring what she calls an edge. She said New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh saying Bernier will bring a hateful message to the debate is foolish. Overall, she believes her party’s leader will help inject energy into the discussion due to some of the party’s proposals in areas like immigration, equalization and supply management.

“We do have such different policies in some respects,” she said.

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In regards to Bernier not originally being invited to the debate, Day said she understood the need to have limits on the number of people invited to take part. She added the Leader’s Debate Commission is correct in looking at factors such as minimum number of members and the possibility of winning a certain number of seats.

Day argues her party has become mainstream in a short period of time by getting over 40,000 people to join and running over 300 candidates across the country.

“Ultimately I disagree that we are a fringe party. There are plenty of fringe parties in this country, we are the fastest growing party in Canadian history,” she said.

The local PPC candidate believes this could help her campaign locally as having the leader appear on a national platform will allow people who are not on social media platforms to hear about the PPC.

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MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn