Pubdate: Thu, 03 Jun 2004
Source: Daily Courier, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 The Okanagan Valley Group of Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/531
Author: Ron Seymour
Cited: Marijuana Party of Canada http://www.marijuanaparty.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjparty.htm (Canadian Marijuana Party)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY AT THE LIQUOR STORE

The Marijuana Party Went Looking For Instant Members Wednesday -- Outside 
The Liquor Store

To get the required 100 names on his Westside candidate's nomination form, 
national party president Blair Longley stood with a clipboard outside the 
government-run store, asking people if they'd care to sign the papers

"This is how we often get enough names on the nomination forms," said 
Longley, a 53-year-old man who lives with his mother in Lumby. "If we try 
it in shopping malls, we usually get chased away by security guards," he 
said. "But it works pretty good in front of liquor stores, because people 
are used to having a lot of weirdos hanging around these places." Longley 
doesn't take politics too seriously. Actually, he doesn't take it seriously 
at all, as he freely admits

"It's all corrupt, completely corrupt," Longley says. "The more you 
understand and look into politics, as I have, the more you realize that." 
Longley says he comes by his cynicismhonestly -- through a long legal fight 
with Revenue Canada. In the 1980s, he conceived of a plan for taxpayers to 
get a federal tax credit for a contribution to a political party, with the 
party then giving the money back to the donor. Donors would get their own 
money back -plus receive a tax credit

While it was technically and legally possible, government officials refused 
to provide him with a letter to this effect, saying the scheme had "abusive 
elements." Longley sued the government for $99 billion. The B.C. Court of 
Appeal ruled in 1999 that Revenue Canada officials had acted in a 
"highhanded, arrogant and dishonest way," and awarded him $55,000 in damages

Longley says he's been living off that money ever since. For the past few 
years, he's been in Montreal, which is where he met Marijuana party Leader 
Marc Boris St. Maurice

Since he believes in the legalization of pot, Longley decided to become the 
party president and agreed to return to B.C. to run in the riding of 
Okanagan-Shuswap

"I'm a professional troublemaker," he says. The Marijuana Party of Canada 
received one-half of one per cent of the national vote in 2000. If it can 
boost that share to two per cent, it will qualify under new election 
financing rules for $400,000 in federal funding. "That's our dream, to get 
that big-daddy allowance," Longley said, adding with a laugh: "We'd spend 
it very, very wisely."
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