Pirate Party raises sails in Canada
Ian | 9 July, 2009 | 21:45
After recent Swedish success, the pro-copyright reform Pirate Party has begun taking shape in Canada.
It’s hard to tell their current numbers, however their forum is fairly active and they already have a number of volunteers signed up in several ridings (some for running for MP).
They’ve even received some media attention from The Canadian Press, CBC, and Boing-Boing.net.
And naturally, they have a manifesto.
So what are there chances?
In Sweden, where copyright law has been a much hotter topic due to the Pirate Bay’s founders being arrested and fined millions, the Pirate Party received roughly 7% of the vote nationally.
Currently, due to our antiquated single-member plurality (or first-past-the-post) system, 10% of the vote nationally has not translated to a single seat for the Green Party.
However, their best bet would not be to run a slate of candidates across the country, but rather, like the Communist, Sex or Marijuana Parties, to run a single or a few candidates in key ridings (perhaps around major universities), and appeal to the youth demographic and the media. With enough coverage, while likely not electing an MP, they could influence public opinion or policy (especially of the opposition parties) to be more supportive.
Several places on their site do explicitly state that they would like to see the NDP or Liberals champion their causes for them if possible (since our system tends to forbid small or single-issue parties from getting elected).
They don’t seem to expect to be ready for a Fall 2009 election if one comes, but after that who knows what will happen (and I’ll likely be living in a different university riding then that might be worth a look by such a party as this).
Also, there will be an Edmonton Meetup on August 19th at 5:00pm at the Elephant & Castle Pub in the City Centre Mall.
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Good post but the Green Party of Canada (GPC) already has copyright policies that are fairly close to the sentiments of the Pirate Party (like how the elected Pirate Party member in the EU just switched to the Greens) and with the GPC’s open grass-roots policy development process I think the members of the Pirate Party would find more success by joining the Green Party of Canada.
Actually, the swedish member didnt walk across the floor, the PiratPartiet MEP has merely joined forces in the Greens/European Free Alliance group.
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2009/06/swedish-pirate-party-mep-joins-the-green-group-/65332.aspx
Meaning that he is going to support them on non-Pirate issues.
Also, the Green Party has had copyright reform policies on their platform for 3 years, and has yet to make any kind of real push or statement about them, they sit on the side, forgotten.
This is why we are here.
Http://www.PiratePartyofCanada.com
” . . . due to our antiquated single-member plurality . . .”
Maybe it’s due to the greens policies not being accepted by people in large numbers rather than our electoral system. Our system rewards people who appeal to large numbers of voters rather than allowing for unpopular ideas to steamroll on in to areas where elected officials are trying to do real work.
If a party gets nearly a million votes in a country of only 30 million, are they really not accepted by “people in large numbers?”