IT’S MY PARTY

What’s in a name? Everything if you’re a new political party in Canada. They seem to pop up almost weekly as crybaby losers, cut loose from their parties, set up their own cribbage clubs. For a few bucks and a clever website, you too can become leader, treasurer and chief strategist of your own party. BYOB.

As the party demi-god, you never have to fear the ambitions of rivals or the annoying bozo eruptions of your minions. Whatever you say is the platform, no matter how confusing. As Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself ? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

The leader may contain multitudes but the party sure doesn’t.

The best part is you get to name your vanity party. Former Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier formed the People’s Party of Canada, which sounds Communist, but without the communism. We think he’s just trying to say politics is about people. Clever guy.

Further to the right, we had the romantic sounding Alliance du Nord, which promoted the right to bear arms. The leader finished last in 2015 and the party website is now “offline.” Such is the fate of these parties.

In Alberta, which sprouts parties like spring dandelions, MLA Derek Fildebrandt, banished from the United Conservative Party for legal and ethical transgressions, was elected leader of his own Freedom Conservative Party. It sounds like it was named by a teenager fed up with his parents’ nightly curfew.

With a little more imagination, Fildebrandt could have called it the Hit and Run Party, Poaching Party or Double Dipping Party. So many choices. So little time.

Even the more broadly based parties get into the act. The Wildrose party (now defunct) duplicated the licence plate slogan, while the Alberta Party, refusing to give away its political leanings, decided to just embrace the whole province. The United Conservative Party, trying to corral all the disparate right-leaning folks, is based on optimism about unity and an eagerness to replace the New Democratic Party, which is far from New.

One could picture a batch of new parties. Calgary city council rebel Jeromy Farkas could lead the Skunk at the Garden Party Party, while financier-philanthropist-agitator W. Brett Wilson could start the W. Loud Shirt Independent Lynching Party.

Then there are parties we’d really like to see. If Joe Ceci, Alberta finance minister and craft brewery champion, ever loses his job, he could head the Free IPA Party. Now that’s a cause we can all get behind.