Independence Party of Alberta


The Independence Party of Alberta , is an Alberta provincial political party founded first in the early 2000s, then revived in 2017.
It was originally dedicated to increasing the autonomy of Alberta within Canadian Confederation, in part as a response to the failure of the Canadian Alliance to make major gains outside of Western Canada in the 2000 Canadian election. It put forward an explicitly separatist political platform for the 2019 Alberta general election.
The party's founding convention in January, 2001, garnered much media attention when several prominent figures from the Canadian Alliance attended as observers, including MPs Myron Thompson and Darrel Stinson, and Alberta 'senators-in-waiting' Ted Morton and Bert Brown. At the convention, Cory Morgan, a 29-year-old geological surveyor, was elected leader.
One of the party's first challenges was to gather enough signatures to qualify as an official party in Alberta, which it failed to do. As a result, in the 2001 Alberta general election, its fourteen candidates were forced to stand as independents.

2001 and 2019 elections results

The party's candidates garnered a total of 7,521 votes. Below is a list of their candidates, votes, and percentages.
  1. Bradley R. Lang 399
  2. Tom Humble 683
  3. Cory Morgan 538
  4. Darren Popik 151
  5. Douglas R. Chitwood 554
  6. Eileen Walker 819
  7. Ron Miller 248
  8. Dennis Young 380
  9. Jon Koch 885
  10. Charles Park 764
  11. Ryan Lamarche 203
  12. Christopher Sutherland 511
  13. Jeff Newland 868
  14. Ben Lussier** 382
The AIP disbanded sometime in 2001, before reforming in 2017 and fielding candidates in the 2019 general election.

Official results

2017–19 Alberta Independence Party Revival

The Alberta Independence Party is experiencing a revival. It ran 63 candidates in the 2019 provincial election and gained party status. Dave Bjorkman, a welder and businessman, became the interim leader early in 2018 and remained so through the May 2019 election until his resignation in July 2019. The party will elect a new leader in the spring of 2020.

Recent history

A press release at 4:00pm shows 46 candidates assembled across Alberta, Canada. Edmonton Legislature steps, Red Deer City Hall and Calgary City Hall all host a press release covered by CTV, Global News and several rural papers. Included in the press release is First Nations Self Government. By Thursday March 21 the Alberta Independence Party fields 51 candidates.
Thursday March 21, 2019 at 6pm, CTV Calgary holds a poll including the Alberta Independence Party among "Fringe parties". The results are 24% of 1,187 Calgarians who participated voted Fringe Party.
The results of all other is 3.4%.
In November, 2017, Bjorkman opposed to Alberta's proposed Bill 24. Bjorkman noted fears pertaining to Alberta's Bill 24 legislation that would encourage secrets and a lack of parental involvement. Bjorkman also stated that he supports rights of parental involvement in the Alberta school system and supports the LGBT+ community. "It's not about being gay or not gay, or transgender; it's about the fact that all parents should be fully aware of any extracurricular activity their children are in," Bjorkman said in a Grandin interview.

Similar Parties

The Alberta Independence Party's 2019 election platform shares several major planks with other conservative political parties in Alberta, such as the Freedom Conservative Party and the United Conservative Party - including opposition to carbon taxes, lowering business and income taxes, and disenfranchisement with federal equalization payments.
However, unlike the FCP, which promotes autonomism, and the UCP, whose leadership continues to support federalism, the AIP promotes a referendum and full independence for Alberta as the primary solution to what it perceives as ills for the province. In this way, it shares more similarities to older Western separatist parties, such as the Western Canada Concept or the Western Independence Party, than it does with contemporary parties.