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People’s Party of Canada releases audited financial report ahead of election call

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4 minute read

They’re a small party with big ambitions and not much to hide apparently.  In the lead up to an expected election call Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada has released a few highlights from the party’s 2020 audited financial report.  This short read sheds some interesting light.  For example, leader Maxime Bernier has disclosed that he’s taking a salary of just over $100,000.  Would be nice to see the same from Canada’s major parties.

From a release of the People’s Party of Canada

The People’s Party of Canada recently filed its 2020 audited financial report with Elections Canada, in accordance with regulations. That report covers the 12-month period between January 1 and December 31, 2020.

We would like to highlight the main items in this report so that you aware of the Party’s financial situation as a member, dedicated volunteer, supporter, or as a donor or potential donor. You can read the full report here.

REVENUES

In 2020, the Party raised $963,059 in donations and $64,407 in membership fees. After adding transfers and interest income, total revenues for 2020 amounted to $1,146,607.

SALARIES AND PROFESSIONAL FEES

The Party’s main item of expenses in 2020 was salaries and benefits, at $395,690. The Party’s had four full-time employees at the beginning of the year and six at the end of the year, including the Leader. Mr. Bernier did not receive any salary or compensation from the Party in 2018 and 2019, as he was then receiving a salary as a Member of Parliament. He only started receiving a salary at the beginning of 2020 and his salary for the year was $104,000.

Contrary to other parties, the Party did not apply for the federal government’s COVID-19 wage subsidy program. The Party also paid $73,428 in professional fees to non-staffers.

LAWYER FEES

The Party spent $61,366 in legal fees in 2020 to defend itself in various lawsuits launched against it. The costs of the current defamation lawsuit against Warren Kinsella are not paid by the Party but by Mr. Bernier himself.

VARIOUS EXPENSES

In 2020, the Party also spent the following amounts on:

  • Advertising = $45,226
  • Travel = $32,454
  • Office supply = $29,301
  • Database = $40,382
  • Telecommunications = $7,182
  • Interest and bank charges = $28,338
  • Rent = $19,284

The Party transferred $42,280 to candidates for the October 2020 by-elections in Toronto Centre and York Centre.

Note that following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in order to reduce costs during these uncertain times, the Party closed its Gatineau office in June 2020 and only reopened one in Ottawa in July 2021 in preparation for the general election. All staffers worked remotely during that period.

SURPLUS

The Party manages its finances in a responsible manner, did not borrow any money to run its election campaign in the fall of 2019, and does not have any debt. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, we finished the year 2020 with $431,635 in cash and cash equivalents. This will serve as a cushion for the snap election expected in the fall of 2021.

CONCLUSION

Running a party necessitates the work of thousands of volunteers, but also involves unavoidable costs. We are proud of what has been accomplished by the People’s Party of Canada so far and we thank the generous donors who made it possible. If you want to help the Party be better financially prepared to sell its bold Canada First platform and fight for Freedom, Responsibility, Fairness and Respect in the next election, please donate here.

Many thanks,
The PPC Team
August 11, 2021

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Business

Overregulation is choking Canadian businesses, says the MEI

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  From the Montreal Economic Institute

The federal government’s growing regulatory burden on businesses is holding Canada back and must be urgently reviewed, argues a new publication from the MEI released this morning.

“Regulation creep is a real thing, and Ottawa has been fuelling it for decades,” says Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI and coauthor of the Viewpoint. “Regulations are passed but rarely reviewed, making it burdensome to run a business, or even too costly to get started.”

Between 2006 and 2021, the number of federal regulatory requirements in Canada rose by 37 per cent, from 234,200 to 320,900. This is estimated to have reduced real GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points, employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points, according to recent Statistics Canada data.

Small businesses are disproportionately impacted by the proliferation of new regulations.

In 2024, firms with fewer than five employees pay over $10,200 per employee in regulatory and red tape compliance costs, compared to roughly $1,400 per employee for businesses with 100 or more employees, according to data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Overall, Canadian businesses spend 768 million hours a year on compliance, which is equivalent to almost 394,000 full-time jobs. The costs to the economy in 2024 alone were over $51.5 billion.

It is hardly surprising in this context that entrepreneurship in Canada is on the decline. In the year 2000, 3 out of every 1,000 Canadians started a business. By 2022, that rate had fallen to just 1.3, representing a nearly 57 per cent drop since 2000.

The impact of regulation in particular is real: had Ottawa maintained the number of regulations at 2006 levels, Canada would have seen about 10 per cent more business start-ups in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.

The MEI researcher proposes a practical way to reevaluate the necessity of these regulations, applying a model based on the Chrétien government’s 1995 Program Review.

In the 1990s, the federal government launched a review process aimed at reducing federal spending. Over the course of two years, it successfully eliminated $12 billion in federal spending, a reduction of 9.7 per cent, and restored fiscal balance.

A similar approach applied to regulations could help identify rules that are outdated, duplicative, or unjustified.

The publication outlines six key questions to evaluate existing or proposed regulations:

  1. What is the purpose of the regulation?
  2. Does it serve the public interest?
  3. What is the role of the federal government and is its intervention necessary?
  4. What is the expected economic cost of the regulation?
  5. Is there a less costly or intrusive way to solve the problem the regulation seeks to address?
  6. Is there a net benefit?

According to OECD projections, Canada is expected to experience the lowest GDP per capita growth among advanced economies through 2060.

“Canada has just lived through a decade marked by weak growth, stagnant wages, and declining prosperity,” says Ms. Wittevrongel. “If policymakers are serious about reversing this trend, they must start by asking whether existing regulations are doing more harm than good.”

The MEI Viewpoint is available here.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

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2025 Federal Election

The Last Of Us: Canada’s Chaos Election

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Show me good loser and I’ll show you a loser— Leo Durocher

There’s an expression that goes, you’re not allowed to die until all the people in your life have disappointed you. That trenchant observation is particularly relevant to those who woke up on April 29 to discover that their neighbours and friends in Canada have opted to give the federal Liberals (under new leader Mark Carney) another four years to continue Canada’s descent into irrelevance.

These are the same Liberals sans Carney who were polling in the low 20s six months earlier. Their cabinet members were quitting in droves. In the finest Wag The Dog tradition, a sure victory for Canada’s Conservatives was then transformed into a humiliating defeat that saw the Tories leader Pierre Poilievre lose the seat he’d represented for 20 years. The debate in the chattering classes now is how much was Poilievre’s fault?

In a minor vindication the Liberals were seemingly denied a majority by three seats (169-144) . How they balance that equation to advance their pet projects on trade, climate, gender, free speech, native rights and Donald Trump was unknowable Which is why the Grits have turned to dumpster diving MPs like Elizabeth May and keffiyeh-clad NDP to achieve a workable majority..

Suffice to say that neophyte Carney, without any support system within the Liberals, is being highly influenced by the Justin Trudeau faculty lounge left behind after the disgraced three-term PM slunk off into the night.

It’s not all beer and skittles. No sooner had the Liberal pixie dust settled than Carney was hit with Bloc leader Yves-Francois  Blanchet announced unequivocally that energy pipelines were still a no-go in electrified Quebec. Alberta premier Danielle Smith lowered the requirement for a separation referendum from 600 K signatures to around 170 K— a very doable mark in pissed-off Alberta.

Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe outlined his demands on Carney if his province is not to join Alberta. And former British PM Tony Blair, who’d worked with Carney in the UK, announced that Carney’s pet project Net Zero was a loser for nations. Finally RBC revealed it was moving beyond diversity toward “inclusion” by removing “unconscious bias” among its upper ranks.

Such is the backwash from April 28. If you listened to the state-supported media on election night you might think that Trump had picked on poor, innocent friend next door Canada. His outrageous 51st state jest did send the Canadian political apparatus into panic. A Liberal party that proclaimed Canada a postmodern state with no real traditions (lowerering flags to half mast for six months to promote their Rez School genocide hustle) suddenly adopted the flag-waving ultra-patriotic visage of expatriate comedian Mike Myers.

Instead the commentariat was spitballing about how to make the House of Commons function more smoothly or if Carney should depart for Europe immediately or in a month to meet his true constituents in the EU commentariat. China? Wassat’? Urban crime? I can’t hear you. Canada as fentanyl capital of the West? Not interested.

Astonishingly, many people who should know better bought it. It was Boomers waking from a long nap to impose their cozy values one final time on the nation they’d created via Trudeau. Comfy ridings like Oakville, Burlington, North Vancouver, Ottawa Centre and Charlottetown mailed it in for another four years. Academic hotbeds like Western (London), Laurier (Kitchener),  Waterloo, UNB (Fredericton),  U Calgary (Confederation) Alberta (Strathcona) and UBC (Vancouver) also kept the radical dream alive.

Meanwhile shrieks of “Panic!” over Trump decimated the Bloc (22 seats) and the NDP (7 seats) with their support transferred to a banker-led party that had been poison to them only six months earlier. You could not have written a more supportive script for a party who had neglected the essentials in traditional Canada while pursuing radical policies to please the globalists of the West.

Speaking of time capsules, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a more retro scene than the one produced by the legacy TV networks. With their emphasis on the horse-race story the tone, the panels, the hosts could have easily been teleported from 1990s. While many were interested in the micro of government finance, most listeners were expecting maybe a word or two on the collapsed state exposed by Trump’s aggressive negotiating.

As we’ve mentioned often before, Canada’s allies are appalled by the takeover of the country by malign actors, drugs traffickers, money launderers, real-estate manipulators and Chinese subterfuge. Trump’s generic reference to the border was a catch-all for the corruption swallowing the election process and the finance of the country.

That avoidance was echoed by pollsters who spent the night talking about how the final figures reflected their findings. Except for those that didn’t— Conservatives vote tally over 41 percent and Liberals well under 200 seats. What was avoided was the cumulative effect of highly inflated Liberal polling during the campaign, the “why-bother?” narrative they sold to voters appalled by the Liberals manipulation of the process to switch leaders and hold a micro-campaign of 36 days.

While Donald Trump has announced he’ll work with Carney on tariffs, it’s still highly likely that this was the final Canadian election fought by the old rules where the have-nots (Atlantic Canada) the haves-but-outraged (Quebec) and the indolent (Ontario) control the math for making government. The money pump (Alberta, Saskatchewan) will seek to attract eastern BC and southern Manitoba to their crew. In the worst case Carney may be the nation’s final PM of ten provinces plus territories.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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