The People’s Party of Canada has been blocked from registering its name for a provincial party in Ontario by a Toronto man, who began running in election campaigns as a “Peoples Political Party” candidate years before Maxime Bernier created his national party.

Kevin Clarke, a former teacher, perennial election candidate and advocate for the homeless, founded his provincial group in 2011, and registered the name “The Peoples Political Party” with Elections Ontario.

Since then, Clarke’s party has fielded as many as six candidates in a provincial election campaign, but no member has garnered more than half a per cent of the vote. Clarke himself has run unsuccessfully more than 20 times, most prominently in Toronto’s mayoral race.

The federal People’s Party was founded by Bernier in 2018 after he narrowly lost a race to lead the federal Conservative party. It promoted a right-wing agenda in the 2019 and 2021 federal election campaigns.

But although Bernier heads a national political party that once had a sitting member of Parliament, Elections Ontario has denied numerous requests to register a provincial People’s Party because its name is too close to the one already registered by Clarke.

Those rejections, which came within two years of the next Ontario election, appear to have derailed the possibility of linking provincial candidates by name to the populist and libertarian national party, which won no seats in 2021’s federal election but tripled its vote share from the 2019 campaign.

Clarke showed the Star a series of email messages sent in 2021 in which Koltyn Wallar, a communications assistant for the federal People’s Party, invited him to run under the party’s banner in return for surrendering the rights to its name in Ontario.

According to the email exchanges, that negotiation broke down after Clarke added a number of other people to the email thread, some of whom ended up responding. In an email exchange with the Star, Wallar confirmed that he had reached out to Clarke. “We were interested in securing the name to use it at a future point,” he wrote.

Wallar, who has also run as a PPC candidate, did not say whether he had been authorized by the People’s Party to approach Clarke on its behalf. The party did not respond to that question, and neither provided any comment when presented with the full email thread.

In a March email, Wallar raised the naming issue with Clarke, who has run unsuccessfully for mayor six times, most recently in 2018. Wallar described what he viewed as similarities between his party’s positions and Clarke’s. “Like yourself, we want to fight against the establishment and help the people before special interests,” he wrote. Clarke responded that he had previously reached out to the People’s Party but had not received a response. Wallar apologized, praising Clarke and saying the party would “highly consider” his application to run under its banner in the 2021 federal election if he gave up the name.

“We will also invite you to be a candidate in any riding of your choice for next year’s general Ontario election,” Wallar added.

Although Clarke responded positively, the talks foundered after he posted about the matter on Facebook and added the other people to the email conversation. Wallar asked Clarke to take the posts down.

That rubbed him the wrong way, Clarke said in an interview. “Hold it, you’re supposed to be the People’s Party, and you want to keep things away from the people?” he said.

Clarke did not respond to Wallar’s request in the email thread, but two of the people he added did. One questioned whether one party is entitled to a name over another. Another criticized the federal movement.

Wallar then wrote that he was ending the conversation.

However, he added, “if you would like to discuss this further, you can always reach me at this email address.”

Clarke says he’s had no further contact with the People’s Party beyond a missed phone call. The party did not respond when asked what further contact it had with Clarke. According to Elections Ontario’s database, it has rejected five applications to register the name “People’s Party of Ontario” since 2020, and a sixth application was withdrawn.

Those records did not contain detailed information about who submitted the applications.

Months after the email exchange between Wallar and Clarke began, a de facto provincial wing of Bernier’s party — the Ontario First Party — was launched by Independent MPP Randy Hillier.