Party for Accountability, Competency and Transparency
The Party for Accountability, Competency and Transparency, formerly the Online Party of Canada, was a Canadian website and was a federally registered political party founded in October 2010. The party was founded by Michael Nicula of Toronto. The party was deregistered by Elections Canada on July 31, 2016.
The Party for Accountability, Competency and Transparency was a non-partisan political party founded on the principles of participatorye-democracy where members voted directly on specific issues via the party website and, in return, party officials must support the majority position on every issue, regardless of their personal position. To ensure accountability, all PACT representatives wrote up their own Promissory Letter of Resignation before being eligible to run for office. Any PACT representative who votes against the will of the majority could be asked to resign.
The Party for Accountability, Competency and Transparency did not have a set agenda. The political platform was a compilation of issue positions from the OPC website, voted from members and grouped by issue category, e.g., economic, healthcare, environment, etc. The key aspect of the platform is the importance given to certain categories; however, particular issues and respective positions are determined solely based on members’ votes.
Membership
Unlike most recognized political parties, all eligible voters in Canada, including members of other federal political parties, are allowed and strongly encouraged to become members of PACT in order to cast votes and comment on issues. In this sense, PACT is more like to a virtual House of Commons of Canada, representing all political stripes, rather than a traditional political party. To ensure that each voting citizen only casts a single vote on each issue, only members' votes count toward the official party position and members are only authenticated once a signed paper form, recognized by Elections Canada, is submitted to the PACT. Through this process, every PACT member and their respective electoral district as voting citizens is verifiable through the National Register of Electors, similar to the voter identification process followed by Elections Canada during Federal Elections.
