A new political party has launched today and it has one mandate: to separate Vancouver Island from British Columbia and make it Canada’s 11th province.
The new group calls themselves the ‘Vancouver Island Party’ and is led by Robin Richardson, a Harvard economist and former Ontario Conservative MP who moved to the island 30 years ago.
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In addition to operating as its own province, the party has high hopes of providing students on the island with free tuition, reducing and/or removing BC Ferries rates with a government subsidy, and also building a bridge from Campbell River to metro Vancouver.
The Vancouver Island Party is currently recruiting 14 candidates, who will run as a slate for all fourteen Vancouver Island ridings in the provincial election scheduled for May 9, 2017.
This is not the first time a party has launched a campaign in hopes of an independent island.
Most recently in 2013, there was a petition to lobby Vancouver Island as its own province, an effort that was unsuccessful.
