It may have taken a while, but the Pirate Party of Canada is finally on the road to forming. When asked about what’s currently happening, Jake Daynes of the Pirate Party of Canada said that the party is currently seeking membership to help give it some traction.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
The manifesto of the Pirate Party of Canada is in the works, the current members are trying to figure out how to bring awareness, and general internal organization is taking place, but all good things start somewhere. After a few years of discussions on the Pirate Party International website, there are signs that the Pirate Party of Canada is now forming. A website has been set up (including forums) and it’s not hard to see that they are in need of some helping hands.
In Sweden, the Pirate Party stands for privacy, a halt to online censorship, doing away with medical patents and legalizing file-sharing. No surprise that this movement has taken off elsewhere in the world.
We asked the Pirate Party of Canada what all was happening and were able to get a response.
“Your guess that there is some internal organizing going on is 100% accurate,” Daynes told ZeroPaid when asked if there was internal organization taking place, “at this moment in time that is one of our main concerns”
“however,” he added, “membership is still a pressing concern.”
There’s been plenty of issues happening in Canada that the Pirate Party could gain support from. The biggest reason one might join the Pirate Party is if Canadians are fed up with what has happened on the Copyright file. With the Liberals Bill C-60 and the Conservatives Bill C-61, it seems as though neither of the biggest parties haven’t, in practise, been too user friendly. Added to this is the recent comments by the current public safety minister Peter Van Loan during an episode of Search Engine. The minister suggested (direct link to MP3) said that users have no expectation of privacy online and that, in spite of the courts cited by Jesse Brown, suggested that real name, address and telephone number doesn’t count as personal information.
Added to this was recent comments made by the Liberal party which said that Canada needs to immediately reform copyright laws to “combat” the “scourge” of piracy and ratify WIPO. Those comments were followed up by follow-up comments which suggested that merely stating this merely marks interest on the copyright file.
While the Pirate Party of Canada is still a ways of from becoming an officially registered party, it won’t hurt the party to gain a few new interested individuals to help them out reach that goal of becoming an officially registered party in the future a little faster.
To help, you can join the Pirate Party of Canada forum.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
