Photo: Contributed

A previous MLA candidate in Penticton is putting his name forward for the Leader of the BC Libertarian Party, hoping to take over the spot from current leader Don Wilson, who is resigning.

Libertarian Keith MacIntyre took 2.61 per cent or 717 votes in the 2020 provincial election, which was noted as a record for the party. It was also the lowest vote count in the riding.

The election will occur at the May 8 AGM which will be held online between 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. and is open to all members of the BC Libertarian Party, online here.

“It was a tough election. We had never ran a candidate in Penticton and I had to educate the electorate on what the Libertarian party was, as well as why I would be a great candidate. I can’t count how many times someone said if I was Conservative they would vote for me, and after a brief conversation they changed their mind. Without the ability to campaign in person, and audience-less election forums, I believe we would have had an even better showing,” MacIntyre said in a press release.

“We are experiencing the biggest loss of Liberty in many lifetimes and it’s happening across the globe. I’ve watched in amazement as people have applauded the government for locking people in quarantine hotels and now we are going to have random police checks for leaving our health region? What’s next, stickers on our cars, or our person, indicating where we are from so the police can demand us to show them our papers? There is no disease serious enough to take these measures. If the government treated us like adults, and allowed us to live more freely and had any semblance of strategy to this pandemic, we’d be living our lives by now.”

MacIntyre added that Wilson completed several years of great work growing the party and he sees an opportunity to grow the party in the Interior.

“Our membership is growing, and I see a very strong foundation. Over the last several years the party has built a fantastic team and is set up for success. The way we all came together on short notice and ran the 4th most candidates of any party was inspiring to me. I’m not a politician, I think politics are disgusting, but something must be done to move past the divisive, emptiness that is our current ‘democracy’.”

Founded in 1986, the party previously ran 30 candidates in the 2017 election and 25 in the 2020 election. The party’s stated their commitment to ‘providing British Columbians with more choice in the delivery of services, lower taxes, and real freedom.’

“Why do we continue to talk about the left wing and the right wing. We’re following a centuries old tradition that doesn’t apply anymore. Wings don’t apply in politics (except chicken wings, those are delicious). The conversation should be about Authority vs Liberty and decentralizing decision-making. So many decisions are made behind closed doors in Victoria that make no sense anywhere in the province,” MacIntyre said.

“I see time and time again, stats about people feeling politically homeless. The reason for this is that people are waking up to the fact that they have been marketed into divisiveness. What if we elected real people, not politicians. Real people whose goal it is to gain power in order to decentralize it, distribute it, and ultimately give up that power.”