What happens to fringe parties if the election is a 2-horse race?

Cannabis has been legal in Canada since 2018 and yet the Marijuana Party — which was formed to champion legalization — is still running two candidates in this election.

"The Marijuana Party has been effectively dead. I've kept it barely alive by doing the minimum necessary to keep it registered," Blair Longley, the party's leader, told CBC News.

The party has shifted focus since 2018, raising concerns about how the government regulates pot.

"It's just so rife with absurdities and psychotic BS … it's so screwed up," Longley said of the government's regulatory system. He said that his party has been able to stay registered thanks to people who share those concerns and are willing to take out party memberships.

"[But] if it was only that issue, then I would have been out of this game a long time ago," he said.

Longley said his main concern right now is electoral financing rules he believes are overly restrictive for smaller parties. He's filed legal challenges against the government over those laws with limited success and says he is currently trying to take the government to court again.

"It not just disadvantages smaller parties in general, but [it's] particularly worse on the Marijuana Party," Longley said.

The Marijuana Party is one of 10 small parties that are only running only a handful of candidates this election. Combined, there are 199 candidates for these small slates.

With the election shaping up as a two-horse race between the Liberals and Conservatives, Richard Johnston, a professor emeritus with the University of British Columbia's political science department, says the smaller parties have become more sidelined than usual.

"It leaves them even more kicked to the side of the road than in a more ordinary election," he said.

But Chris MacKenzie — a political sociologist at the University of British Columbia and author of Pro-Family Politics and Fringe Parties in Canada — says small parties rarely focus on electoral success. Rather, they get involved to help draw attention to issues they don't feel are fully addressed by their larger counterparts.

"What their registration as a political party gives them is a platform. It gives them a voice in [the] mainstream electoral political domain where they can go to all-candidates' meetings and they can emphasize the issue that is of particular concern to them," he said.

That being said, MacKenzie agrees that there is probably less appetite for the electorate to cast a "boutique vote" in this election given the heightened sense of urgency around the main ballot questions, specifically U.S. relations and the cost of living.

It's a rarity to see smaller parties have electoral success and they typically act as a protest vote for Canadians disaffected by the major parties. In 2021, small parties accounted 0.75 per cent of the total votes cast. MacKenzie anticipates they'll account for even less this time around.