The other day I was looking up some information on the Elections Canada website (elections.ca) when something jumped out at me.
Dr. Jim Pankiw.
He’s back.
Again.
Pankiw had been a Reform member of Parliament for SaskatoonHumboldt, elected in 1997, and then was elected for the Canadian Alliance in 2000. Things went off the rails with him, to put it mildly, in 2001 and he ended up becoming an independent MP and was defeated in 2004.
I had the privilege of covering his campaign in BattlefordsLloydminster when he was running as an independent, which he lost handily. He came in third, bringing in 4,396 votes to incumbent Conservative Gerry Ritz’s 16,491 and NDP Elgin Wyatt’s 4,829. Let’s just say Pankiw’s approach was, well, different. Let’s just say he likes to talk about race, specifically First Nations, a lot.
This is why it was quite remarkable that, after having been rejected by the Canadian Alliance, and then the voters, multiple times, he’s back at it once again, but with his own political party, no less.
Elections Canada has the Canada Party registered as a political party. It became eligible earlier this year on February. 2. The leader is listed as Dr. James K. Pankiw. It’s national headquarters is in Saskatoon. The web site is www.canadaparty.ca.
It’s not a bad looking website except that it provides essentially zero information about the party. There are clickable areas for fiscal responsibility, constitutional change, equality, democratic accountability and justice reform, but nothing actually appears on the screen.
To get anywhere you need to download the Gold Book, a 16page book full of quotes from Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Plato. Canadians, all, right?
No wait, there are three Canadians quoted: Mel Smith, Stephen Harper and, thankfully, one from Jim Pankiw himself.
Here’s what he had to say on June 2, 1997: “It is not possible to discriminate in favour of someone on the basis of race, without simultaneously, and unfairly discriminating against someone else because of their race.”
The closing page before asking for money says, “Canada Party – We believe in equality of all people. Stop all race-based privileges! Don’t allow our children to grow up as second class citizens.”
While the platform has a little bit of meat to it, there’s the fi rst few points, under the heading of Indian Affairs:
“A) – People of Indian ancestry will be full and equal participants in Canadian citizenship, indistinguishable in law from other Canadians.
“B) – Private ownership of their home and land.
“C) – Abolition of the treaties is long overdue and equality of all Canadians is due. These unconscionable documents of peace and surrender were made generations ago. They have resulted in a racially segregated society by conferring special race based rights and privileges on people of Indian ancestry.
“D) Racist documents have no relevance in a modern society. The Canada Party’s vision for the future is to place the current racist system (separate classes of Canadian citizenship based on ancestry) firmly in the past.”
Then he’s going to take a whack at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “The Canada Party will interpret the equality guarantee in Section 15(1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as mandating equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. Section 15 (2) will be removed, thereby ending discriminatory race and gender-based hiring policies in favour of merit-based hiring.”
Under the fiscal responsibility heading, the platform states, “Eliminate special tax-free status and government handouts on the basis of race.”
Other issues, like agriculture, labour, pension, senate, recall and referendum, much of it looks like it was taken from the old Reform policy handbook. There’s also some get-tough-on-crime notes. Marijuana would be heavily regulated and taxed.
It makes for interesting reading.
The document is dated November 4, 2014, so he’s been thinking about this for a while.
I wonder how much play he’s going to get in the media this time, and how many votes he’ll get. If nothing else, Jim Pankiw does not give up.
