Pirate Party of Canada

Pirate Party of Canada Parti Pirate du Canada
Active federal party
Leader	Shawn Vulliez
President	Sean Hunt
Founded	June 12, 2009 (2009-06-12)
Headquarters	43 Samson Blvd #165, Laval QC H7X 3R8[1]
Ideology	IP reform Network neutrality Open government
International affiliation	Pirate Parties International
Official colours	Red and White
Membership	2,644 (February 2012)
Seats in the House of Commons	0 / 308
Seats in the Senate	0 / 105
Website
www.pirateparty.ca
Politics of Canada Political parties Elections

The Pirate Party of Canada (French: Parti Pirate du Canada, abbreviated as the PPCA), is a federal minor party in Canadian politics. The party was registered with Elections Canada in 2010 becoming eligible to field candidates in Canadian federal elections. The PPCA is modelled after the Swedish Piratpartiet and advocates intellectual property reform, privacy protection, network neutrality and greater government openness.^[2]

Founding and development

The PPCA was founded in June 2009 by a handful of Canadian supporters active on the web forums of the Pirate Parties International collective.^[3][4][5] The party established its own forums and removed membership fees, as part of a campaign to gain the 250 members necessary for registration,^[6] gaining 1,000 members by October 2009.^[7]

In October 2009 the party selected university student Jake Daynes as its interim leader and established an interim council.^[8] On September 1, 2010, the first official Federal Council was elected, led by web developer Mikkel Paulson.^[9][10]

According to Elections Canada, the Pirate Party became eligible to field candidates on April 12, 2010 and was registered on November 6, 2010.^[11] As of November 2010 the party claims to have over 2,000 members.^[12] Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May noted that the PPCA seemed redundant, as the two parties shared the majority of their platforms on copyright reform, medical patents and intellectual property;^[13] but the PPCA responded that "even if the Green Party had the same stance as us, [...] they were not talking about these issues in the last election; no party was".^[14]

Following the 2011 election the party examined issues that had arose with its constitution and began taking steps to reform it. Issues included a hard to reach quorum for General Meetings and the difficulties of the Federal Council members running for office while also handling party paperwork and administration. On December 19 the party adopted the new constitution and held elections for the new Executive Board and Political Council.^[15]

Projects

On September 27, 2009, the party launched a BitTorrent tracker, named the "Canadian Pirate Tracker" or "CaPT", with the aim of promoting its position on works being released online^[16]

Pirate Party Radio was a weekly audio show from 2009-2011 produced by the Canadian RantMedia and host James O'Brien.^[17] It was officially recognised by the Pirate Party of Canada,^[18] United States Pirate Party^[19] and Pirate Party UK.^[20] As of May 5, 2011 the weekly broadcasts stopped.

In 2011, in response to lawful access legislation that was being put forward in Parliament, the PPCA announced it would launch a VPN service to help guard Canadians' online privacy.^[21]

In early 2012, also in response to Bill C-30, several members of the Pirate Party of Canada created a new Linux distro titled Pirate Linux. It is installable as a package on an existing Linux system or as its own distribution based off of Ubuntu. It includes many privacy enhancements, including utilizing Tor with browsers preconfigured for its use.^[22]

Political positions

Like the Swedish Pirate Party, the PPCA platform is focused on intellectual property reform, privacy, net neutrality and open government.^[2] The party has also called for net neutrality in Canada, and suggested that medical patents^{[disambiguation needed ]} are preventing innovations that could save lives.^[24] Candidates have also suggested that making government records available online may encourage transparency, and allow citizens to more directly scrutinize and participate in the process.^[25]

Like their Pirate counterparts worldwide, the PPCA is bloc-neutral on other issues, noting that issues outside the party's realm are left to the individual candidate to represent their own constituents' desires.^[26][27][25]

The PPCA, along with the NDP, has been heralded by OpenMedia.ca for its "digital policy issues".^[28]

Party governance

The party is run by three organs of party governance, Executive Board, Political Council, and General Meeting. The Executive Board consists of the president, vice-president, leader, deputy leader, secretary, and chairs of standing committees of the party.^[29] The Political Council consists of the leader, deputy leader and other council members elected by approval voting.^[30] The General Meeting is open to all members and meets monthly.^[31] While the Executive Board and Political Council can act independently in most matters, the General Meeting has veto power over their decisions and may pass their own motions.^[32][33]

Executive Council	Political Council
Sean Hunt President 2012-current Jack McLaod Vice Preident 2012-current Ric Lim Secretary 2012-current Shawn Vulliez Leader* 2012-current Travis McCrea Deputy Leader* 2012-current	Shawn Vulliez Leader* 2012-current Travis McCrea Deputy Leader* 2012-current Jake Daynes Member 2012-current Johann Weiss Member 2012-current Sean Hunt Member 2012-current	Party leader Shawn Vulliez

Leaders

• Jacob Daynes (Acting) (2009-2010)
• Mikkel Paulson (2010-2012)
• Shawn Vulliez (2012-present)

Elections

The first federal election contested by the party was the November 2010 by-election in Winnipeg North, finishing ahead of the Communist and Christian Heritage parties, but behind the Green Party.^[12][34]

For the 2011 federal election, the PPCA put forward candidates in 10 of the 308 ridings, averaging 0.63% support for their candidates. Comparatively, this meant the PPCA finished ahead of the Communist and Marxist-Leninist federal parties in each of the 6 ridings they shared, but behind the Progressive Canadian and Libertarian Party in their sole shared riding. The media noted that Craig Nobbs ran a zero-dollar campaign.^[35]

2010 by-elections

2011 general election

References

External links

• www.pirateparty.ca

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