British Columbia Unity Party
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Former provincial party | |
Founded | 2001 |
Dissolved | 2008 |
Headquarters | Surrey, British Columbia |
Ideology | Conservatism, Populism |
Colours | Blue and green |
The British Columbia Unity Party was a political party in British Columbia, Canada. The party was founded as an attempted union of five conservative parties: the Reform Party of British Columbia, the British Columbia Social Credit Party, the British Columbia Conservative Party, the British Columbia Party, and the Family Coalition Party of British Columbia. Members from the first four parties joined with the Family Coalition Party to refound the Family Coalition Party as the BC Unity Party on January 10, 2001. The party was formed to present a united conservative option to voters in opposition to the centre-right BC Liberals and the centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP).
Five months after the party was founded, it nominated 56 candidates across the province for the May 16, 2001 provincial elections. During the election campaign, BC Unity positioned itself as a solidly conservative party, in contrast to the BC Liberals. Despite being included in the leaders debate, along with Premier Dosanjh and Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell the unpopularity of the NDP government was so great that most conservative-minded voters chose to vote for the BC Liberals, rather than split the right-of-centre vote once again. The party received only 3.2% of the vote (51,426).
On September 1, 2004, BC Unity and the British Columbia Conservative Party announced an agreement-in-principle for the two parties to merge under the Conservative Party name. The deal, however, fell through after BC Conservative Leader Barry Chilton withdrew. At the Unity annual general meeting held on September 24 and 25, 2004 in Coquitlam, the BC Unity Party was presented with another proposal of merger by the Conservatives. The Unity delegates did not accept this proposal and instead, affirmed the original agreement-in-principle. This action was not accepted by the BC Conservatives and the merger failed. BC Unity leader Chris Delaney blamed himself for the failure of the merger and resigned.