The Western Independence Party (WIP) was a Canadian political party that advocated the separation from Canada of the western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well as the Yukon and Northwest Territories to form a new country.
The WIP ran 11 candidates in the Canadian federal election of 1988 - one candidate in British Columbia, seven in Alberta, and three in Manitoba (although one of the Manitoba candidates appears to have withdrawn before election day). All the candidates were soundly defeated with none garnering even 1% of the popular vote in any riding.
The party also has or had provincial branches in each of the four provinces. The federal wing of the Western Independence Party was dormant; they have not run any candidates in any federal elections since 1988. The party has been resurrected in April, 2005 at a founding convention in Strathmore, Alberta under the new name "Western Canada Party".
The WIP should not be confused with the Confederation of Regions Party, which sought greater autonomy for western Canada, but not full independence.
Read more about Western Independence Party: Founding, Alberta Independence Party, WIP of Saskatchewan, Party Program
Famous quotes containing the words western, independence and/or party:
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“... we’re not out to benefit society, to remold existence, to make industry safe for anyone except ourselves, to give any small peoples except ourselves their rights. We’re not out for submerged tenths, we’re not going to suffer over how the other half lives. We’re out for Mary’s job and Luella’s art, and Barbara’s independence and the rest of our individual careers and desires.”
—Anne O’Hagan (1869–?)
“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)