The New Blue Party of Ontario has officially been registered as a political party by Elections Ontario.
This comes after Independent Cambridge MPP Belinda Karahalios and Party Leader Jim Karahalios garnered enough signatures of support to be recognized as a party. Elections Ontario requires 1,000 endorsement signatures from people who live in Ontario in order for certification to happen.
"We were able to get more than 1,000 signatures," said Karahalios. "I submitted close to 2,000 signatures which were then vetted individually by Elections Ontario to confirm that, in fact, they were real people that lived in the province. Once that was done, Elections Ontario gave us the green light to start running candidates for the next election."
Karahalios was booted from PC caucus in July 2020, after voting against Bill 195, which extended emergency orders for the Ford government through the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, Karahalios said the reason why she voted against the Bill on third reading because it was "an unnecessary overreach on our parliamentary democracy."
Karahalios said that the idea of starting her own party started at just that - an idea. After being ousted from the PC caucus, she started to receive support from people telling her to start her own party.
"We had a lot of people from the riding in Cambridge but also across the province saying 'don't give up, start a new party,' said Karahalios. "It kind of just started as a thought but people started to push us to do something."
Karahalios said that when it came down to selecting a name, they looked at the history of political names and were drawn to "the Parti bleu" or "the blue Party." This was a political party that was founded in 1854 and dissolved in 1867.
"I thought that was kind of clever and kind of simple," said Karahalios. "People usually associate blue with Conservatives - we are a right-of-centre party but we couldn't call ourselves 'the blue Party'."
The feedback that she heard from supporters suggested that the PC party was no longer Conservative.
"I kind of said half-jokingly, 'what about the New Blue Party?'" said Karahalios. "It just kind of rolled off the tongue quite nicely, and it said what we stood for very simply - we are blue and we are new."
Karahalios said that over the last few years, there's been a consistent theme with all the major political parties.
"The consistent lying to their base, the lack of transparency, who's scratching who's back and it's all gone away from the 'little guy', said Karahalios. "We had issues with people getting involved with politics before and it's getting worse because people are seeing that they put their faith into a political party or a leader and the person gets into power and all the promises are broken, they forget about."
That's the group that Karahalios hopes to appeal to with her new party.
"There is a group of supporters each of the major parties that are disenchanted that they want a party they can get behind that actually focuses on the grassroots," said Karahalios. "Politics should always be bottom-up, and that's what the New Blue Party is."
Karahalios also took the time to reflect on the 2018 provincial election. She said that if the party were running back in 2018 the way it is running now, she would have reconsidered running under the Progressive Conservative banner.
"I would not have run under the PC banner," said Karahalios. "At the time in 2018, Premier Ford was saying that he was going to 'clean up the mess', he was going to do things differently and listen to the grassroots members - he's done none of those things."
Karahalios said she and her husband have been trying to work from the 'inside' to make change when she was a PC MPP.
"I tried to put through a private member's bill - Bill 150 - to try to get transparency with internal party elections and the PC party didn't support it. When the final hour came, they decided to support it, and then they said they put a clause in. That Bill is still sitting at committee. Ford talked about free votes. That never happened. The only free vote we had was the pit bull ban and everything else was whipped (...) I would not have run under the PC banner and Doug Ford had I known the corruption was going to be this bad," said Karahalios.
Karahalios and her husband have heard from supporters who feel like they've lost hope in the current major political parties.
"There are those who have said that they are not going to vote [for the current political parties], we are now giving those people an alternative. It's not just those who traditionally vote Conservative - I have spoken with people who have typically voted Liberal who are looking for change because a lot of the parties have changed their focus," said Karahalios.
The next steps for the party are to get riding associations together to start ramping up for the next provincial election which is set to take place in summer 2022.
"We'll be sending out some communications soon to individuals," said Karahalios. "People have been reaching out to me asking about the party without us sending out anything yet. The goal is to get riding associations and candidates in all 124 ridings. The focus will be where we are seeing more support, so of course, there will be some ridings where we will have a stronger base than others - we will absolutely focus on those first and work out from there."
Karahalios said there still needs to be some administrative things that need to be done before they can start reaching out to supporters.
"We are just telling people to sit tight and that more information will come."
She said that she has learned from former MP Max Bernier's process of trying to start a new party after being ousted from Conservative caucus.
"I think one is not backing down on things (...) whatever commitments you make, you can't turnaround and betray people," said Karahalios. "It's not a 'try one election and we're done' situation. This is something that's going to take time."
In order for the political party to receive official party status in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, it must have 12 elected seats.
