Tuesday, August 27, 2013

BC Minor Party Roundup Post 2013 Election

With the 2013 election over the minor party landscape in BC has changed significantly.  We are down to 21 registered political parties in BC.   I last looked at these parties in October of 2012.

We saw several new parties founded in the run up to the election


Combined these two new parties ran 10 candidates, which is not bad given that ten of the 19 parties in the election only ran one or two candidates.  On the other hand, even after looking at the party websites, I have no idea what they are about.

We saw eight parties fade away

  • BC Patriot Party - I saw in the media that they were deregistering and they are no longer on the list of registered political parties but I can not find their deregistration report
  • Progressive Nationalist - they did not run two candidates in the election and are no longer on the list of registered parties, but there is a financial filing for a leadership race for the party.
  • Social Credit - they only ran one candidate and therefore were deregistered
  • Individual Rights - the party leader, Mischa Popoff, decided to join the BC Conservatives and was then dropped by them as a candidate
  • Sex Party - they filed their deregistration in February with an effective date of December 31st 2012
  • Nation Alliance Party - they actually deregistered last year and I missed it somehow.
  • Western Canada Concept - sort of inevitable that with the death of Doug Christie this party would disappear
  • Helping Hand Party - failed to run two candidates in this election\
The remaining minor parties in BC
  • Advocational International Democratic Party of BC - they ran two candidates.   The party lost $806,165.62 on investments in 2013.  Even though the party has assets of $2,800,964.47 on December 31st 2012, they did not choose to spend that money.
  • BC First Party at one point looked like it was going to be a populist right wing party but in the end it was not much of anything 
  • BC Marijuana Party only ran several candidates to ensure they could remain a registered political party
  • BC Libertarian Party put a little effort into the election than the last few.  They ran eight candidates, which is the most they have run since 1996
  • BC Party - only ran some candidates to maintain registration
  • BC Refederation Party - ran no candidates but have a new website.  They are focusing on direct democracy
  • Christian Heritage Party - they managed to run two candidates and one of them Rod Taylor, managed a decent 5.94% of the vote.   Wilf Hanni has seem to have left this party, he is no longer the leader.  Rod Taylor of Telkwa is the interim leader.    \
  • Communist Party of BC - once again a handful of old men put their names forward and did no serious campaigning
  • New Wave - ran no candidates and have a website that is years our of date
  • People's Front - ran no candidates and have no website
  • Platinum Party - ran two candidates and really did not try to campaign.   Out of the 19 parties in the election, they came last with a total of 56 votes.  They have a website that has been unchanged for several years
  • Reform Party of BC - ran no candidates and have a website that has been unchanged for years
  • Unparty: The Consensus-Building Party - ran two candidates but did not try very hard in the election.  The leader has a couple of postings after the election 
  • Work Less Party - no idea about them at all other than they managed to nominate two candidates
  • Your Political Party - two candidates again, no attempt to do much in the way of trying to get elected
BC Refederation, New Wave, People's Front and Reform BC will all have to run at least two candidates in the 2017 election or they will be deregistered

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