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."