There’s a renewed political push to make Vancouver Island its own province.
A new group called the Vancouver Island Party is officially launching Wednesday and says it has a simple mandate: to make the island Canada’s 11th province.
Party leader Robin Richardson, a former Ontario Conservative MP who moved here 30 years ago, says his goal is to run a slate of candidates in all fourteen Vancouver Island ridings for next May’s provincial election.
While the party is small, its plans are anything but.
It wants to separate the island and its roughly 800,000 inhabitants from the rest of British Columbia, lower or abolish rates on BC Ferries, provide free tuition for island students, and even build a bridge at Campbell River connecting Vancouver Island to the mainland.
“We’ll be much better off as a province of Canada than just a region of British Columbia,” Richardson told CTV News. “The reason is that we’d be able to negotiate our way back into Confederation, and our provincial terms of confederation would include a very large subsidy from Ottawa for BC Ferries, which would enable us to reduce or even eliminate the fare.”
The Harvard-trained economist said there are both social and economic reasons the island should break away from B.C.
“We on Vancouver Island have been neglected by federal and provincial governments for time after time after time,” he said.
But it’s not the first time someone has pushed for an independent island. Fringe parties have tried and failed to gain traction on the movement before.
A petition launched by organizers in 2013 aimed to lobby the provincial and federal governments to proclaim Vancouver Island a province, but it too failed to inspire mass support.
B.C. Premier Christy Clark was asked about the newest addition to her political opposition, but brushed the suggestion aside with an attempt humour.
“Well I’ll tell you, if they leave British Columbia, they’re not going to be getting those LNG revenues,” she told reporters at a National Aboriginal Day event at the Royal BC Museum.
But Richardson maintains that his party is no joke, and said he’ll spend the summer recruiting 14 candidates to run in each Vancouver Island riding for the May 9, 2017 provincial election.