Cape Breton Labour Party
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The Cape Breton Labour Party was a social democratic provincial political party in Nova Scotia, Canada that advocated separate provincial status for the island of Cape Breton, which is the northern part of the Province of Nova Scotia.
The party was founded by Paul MacEwan, who first ran for the Nova Scotia Legislative Assembly under the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party (NDP) banner in 1967, and lost.
In 1970, he was elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly as an NDP Member of the Legislative Assembly. After a falling out with the NDP leadership in the early 1980s, MacEwan established the Cape Breton Labour Party and decided that it was time for Cape Breton to become the eleventh province of Canada.
The Cape Breton Labour Party ran thirteen candidates in the 1984 provincial election, but only MacEwan won. MacEwan served several terms as its only elected representative.
MacEwan disbanded his party and sat as an independent for a time before joining the Nova Scotia Liberal Party in the early 1990s.
He was Speaker of the House from 1993 to 1996.
He declined to seek re-election at the 2003 provincial elections, resigning from the assembly after 33 years of continuous service under three different party labels and as an independent.
