After a quarter-century on the federal political scene, the Marijuana Party has been officially deregistered. Elections Canada announced Friday that the party was removed from the registry for failing to provide the minimum 250 valid membership declarations required in the 2025 triennial review. The party, best known for its single-issue platform advocating for the legalization of cannabis, a goal effectively achieved by the Liberal government in 2018, had seen its political relevance diminish in recent years.
Its final stand on the electoral map came in an August 18 by-election, and the results were a microcosm of the party's long struggle for traction. In that race, Marijuana Party candidate Kenneth Kirk placed 11th out of 213 candidates in his district, securing just 40 votes, a fraction of the 41,308 votes that propelled the victorious Conservative candidate to Ottawa.
However, Kirk's candidacy was not what it appeared.
In a since-deleted social media post, Kirk revealed he was running as a "buffer candidate," a strategic move intended to siphon votes away from other fringe candidates and ultimately consolidate support for independent candidate Bonnie Critchley, who finished a distant second.
“With the legalization of cannabis, our core message was adopted by the mainstream,” said one longtime party supporter. “What was left was a political organization struggling to find a new reason for being. Stunts like running as a 'buffer' for another candidate show just how far its purpose had shifted.”
With its official status revoked, the Marijuana Party can no longer issue tax receipts for donations, is ineligible for broadcasting time allocated to registered parties, and loses its place on future ballots unless it reapplies and meets the stringent membership requirements.
A notice of the deregistration will be published in the Canada Gazette.
The move closes a chapter on a party that, for better or worse, helped keep the conversation about cannabis legalization alive in Parliament for years, only to see its reason for existing become law, and its political machinery fade into history.
