The website for Vancouver's oldest political party, the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), went dark on May 1 and nobody seems to have noticed.
After the party completely imploded leading up to last year's election, with their incumbent councillors jumping ship to form a new party (ABC Vancouver) around now-mayor Ken Sim who was the party's previous candidate in the election before last election, and their mayoral candidate John Coupar resigning from the party weeks before the election (yes, my head is spinning too,) the future of the NPA was uncertain.
It's normal for parties to effectively go into hibernation between elections in the city. You won't hear too much from the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) in the years that they fail to get a candidate elected. However even with their meagre fundraising, they still manage to scrape together a few bucks to pay their web server fees.
That does not seem to be the case with the NPA, though the cause for their disappearance could not be confirmed. Their media email is down and my calls - to a line that goes directly to voicemail - were not returned.
Is this the final nail in the coffin? Has ABC Vancouver effectively become the NPA, with its incumbent councillors, former staff, and voters in tow? The party calls itself a "real alternative," and "a broad, inclusive coalition where everyone is welcome."
Sounds a lot like the NPA, but if one thing is certain in Vancouver politics, nobody knows what will happen leading up to the next election.
It's not unlikely that we'll see the old partisan "Non-Partisan" corpse come back to life and go in search of brains, which they seriously lacked in the 2022 election.
