Categories: Andrew Coyne, Capital Read

Simcoe-Grey for the Simcoe-Greyvians!

by Andrew Coyne on Monday, May 3, 2010 9:58pm - 115 Comments

I’m with the burghers of Simcoe-Grey on this: it’s up to the riding association to decide whether Helena Guergis should remain as their candidate, not party central command.

The way we choose riding nominees is one of many outstanding weaknesses in Canadian politics. On the one hand, it is unconscionable that candidates should be obliged to get the party leader to sign their nomination papers before they can stand for office. It’s a direct affront to local democracy.

On the other hand, well, local democracy is a joke. Nomination races are too often decided by busloads of instant members and other abuses, the sort of 19th century shiv-and-whiskey politics that is unique to Canada among the advanced democracies.

We’d get better candidates, and better races, if being an MP meant something — that is, if they were not so tightly controlled by the leader’s office. But the first step on cracking the leaders’ iron grip is for riding associations to stand up for themselves.

MPs with strong riding associations are better placed to challenge the leadership. In particular, a cleaner, more legitimate process for choosing candidates would give MPs the democratic standing, as legitimate representatives of the membership in their ridings, to take back the process of leadership selection — the key to righting the balance of power between caucus and leader.

In a proper Westminster system, the leader is selected by the members of the Parliamentary caucus. In our run-down, degraded version of Westminster, the leader picks the caucus.

Tags: conservative party, democracy, leader, Nominations, Parliament, reform, ridings

More by Andrew Coyne

http://intensedebate.com/people/DanielBlouin DanielBlouin

Very few people who support proportional representation support a pure PR system. A lot of what's being proposed domestically is either single transferrable vote (where your second or third choice can have some influence) or mixed-member proportional, which uses lists to bring the proportion of MPs somewhere close to the proportion of votes.

But to answer your riding association question, I see a couple of ways this helps matters. Firstly, it lets parties avoid the issue of parachuting in candidates to particular ridings, since you can just add a star candidate to your list instead (if you end up going with a mixed list system).

it also does away rather neatly with the polite fiction that Cabinet ministers can doubly function as MPs for their constituencies throughout the year. I'm okay with the PM spending most of his or her time on the affairs of the country, frankly, and while I'm sure he has a very strong constituency office in Calgary Southwest to help his residents with routine matters like petitions and help with passports, etc., it would be best for everyone involved to separate the two tasks. Put the party leader and a few potential cabinet ministers (generally the most qualified ones) on your list and you have elected MPs who can devote their full attention to the needs of their constituents.

You might also get some more substantive debate on specific issues – if you know ahead of time that Lawrence Cannon, Paul Dewar and Bob Rae are the prospective list candidates for Minister of Foreign Affairs, then they can concentrate on the FA aspects of their parties' platforms and debate issues without having to spend 6 days out of 7 back in their ridings making sure they don't lose their seats.

Let directly elected MPs concentrate on being great constituency MPs. Let the list candidates concentrate on being stars on their specific issues. I see a lot of positives.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

Not at all. There are means to do riding level representation while maintaining proportional representation.

Of course, each system has its flaws (my own system, for instance, has the flaw that in areas where the constituency does not evidence a strong leaning in one way or the other, their pluralative "winner" may be supplanted by a candidate better representing the national desire — also, it has difficulties dealing with regional parties vs. low vote national parties as in the Bloc and Greens. Of course, it has benefits in that voting is exactly the same as now, the party does not get to choose which candidate gets in via lists, and that ridings which have strong preferences can elect their chosen representatives, even independants, while the system maintains decent levels of proportionality)
sally

Well said
http://intensedebate.com/people/bergkamp bergkamp

"And why shouldn't a candidate criticize a leader? …. There's far too much made of party loyalty, and too little made of personal responsibility and responsibility to one's constituents."

I agree. You are preaching to the choir but it is never going to happen. Unless we abolish parties, they are always going to have a say in who their potential nominees are. I was just thinking of some compromise that both sides – MPs and Party – could agree to.
Cats

GROMBLES.

Somebody likes dogs.

Well I say that post was for the dogs !
http://intensedebate.com/people/YYZ YYZ

Correct. See Ignatieff, Michael.

http://intensedebate.com/people/tobyornotoby tobyornotoby

I'd agree with that. I've never liked the idea of finding a riding for someone to run in, and don't vote for candidates who are suddenly enthusiastic about the long traditions of Upper West SlowDitch.

Orson Bean

I agree 100%. I used to be involved for many years in federal politics at the local riding assocation level. Especially if the party, or the riding association, becomes organizationally or financially weak (as, e.g., happened to the old PC party in several geographic areas after the decimation of 1993), it is incredibly easy for a riding association to be hijacked by any number of well-organized nutbar/rogue groups. There is no way a national party should have to tolerate that.

This is a classic case of general rule with an exception. General rule = riding assocation autonomy. Exception = where that autonomy leads to a result that is clearly bad for the nationial party.

Lord Kitchener's Own

General rule = riding association autonomy. Exception = where that autonomy leads to a result that is clearly bad for the national party.

It's like the Tories overall approach to government. General rule = democratic accountability. Exception = where democratic accountability leads to a result that is clearly bad for the government.

Orson Bean

Trinity-Spadina, for a conservative, is a political suicide mission. An absolute exercise in futility. It's like getting your parachute caught in the trees so the Nazi machine gunners can easily pump you full of bullets.

Mulletaur

4985 votes and 12.29%, it wasn't a total suicide mission. She may even have lived there at the time.

Orson Bean

Yes, if you want a majority government, that means you're a bad person.

Got it.
Orson Bean

Mark, that's a great point. I do recall that there's always been that tension between the national party's need for money and donors to fund national operations, versus the need at the local level. It hadn't occurred to me that our campaign finance law changes would have affected that, but of course it makes perfect sense that they would have.
Gary

As opposed to, say the Liberals?
How about asking Dennis Coderre his opinion on Montreal-Outremont fiasco?
Do all Libs have such a short memory span similar to the dog in the movie "Up"?
What dweebs!
http://intensedebate.com/people/Gaunilon Gaunilon

If the Simcoe-Greyvians really care about any of this and find that they don't like the candidate selected for them by either their riding association or Harper, they'll elect an independent candidate and show the CPC who is boss.

And perhaps this time they'll look a little further than favoured demographics when choosing a candidate.
ex canuck

Frankly, Mr Coyne, I don't give a d……….(or, why am I reading this sh…..?
The Real Jan

Cats – to quote a C,onservative Senator – 'Shut the …' – on no, that would be rude. Why doesn't Harper just cook up some breach the way he did with Garth Turner, and be done with her?
http://intensedebate.com/people/Open_Democracy Open_Democracy

I haven't seen one of them yet that is any different from the next. Preston Manning tried and look where that got him.

http://intensedebate.com/people/tobyornotoby tobyornotoby

Don't kid yourself. Preston Manning made a virtue out of pretending to try, same as everyone blames the NDP for doing. Some honourable gentlemen are more honourable when they aren't faced with deciding where to arrange the furniture on Sussex Drive.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Be_rad Be_rad

Dogs – man's best friend. Cats – nobody's friend
hosertohoosier

No no no. Canadians are better served by parties willing to trample their riding associations. Has anybody gone to a riding association meeting? These people are not a broad, representative swathe of the public. They are narrow-minded folks with an axe to grind and an agenda to hawk. Party leaders care largely about the electability of candidates. However electability is not a shallow concern – the most electable candidate will be the one closest to the views of the average citizen (as opposed to the average dues-paying party member) in a riding.

Secondly, riding associations can easily be stacked. For instance, Chuck Cadman lost – badly – in his nomination race, but went on to trounce his opponents in the general election as an independent (the Conservative got something like 12% of the vote). If there are 100,000 dues paying members of a party in the country, that makes a bit over 300 members per riding (and of course some ridings will have far fewer). In other words, most people could win a party's nomination largely by getting all of their facebook friends to join a party and vote for them.

Parliament is well-served by the exclusion of folks like Larry Spencer from high office. The power to nominate by fiat has not been abused by party leaders – it is rarely used and only in fairly egregious cases.

Orson Bean

Agreed, hth. I'm willing to venture that many people who advocate for the sanctity of riding association autonomy have never belonged to a riding association (I have) and never attended a riding association nomination meeting (I have). They are vastly overrated as icons of our democratic system.

Mulletaur

"I’m with the burghers of Simcoe-Grey on this: it’s up to the riding association to decide whether Helena Guergis should remain as their candidate, not party central command."

Without question, the funniest thing you've ever written, Coyne. The central party has the obligation to defend the brand, not Guergis and her errant husband. The local riding association ought to shut the f**k up.

Lord Kitchener's Own

All hail the central party. LOL

Mulletaur

Coyne is so terminally obsessed with proportional representation, I would like to see him continue on the subject of that very obvious oxymoron, 'party democracy' for a while. I love irony.

Lord Kitchener's Own

An impressive bio to be sure. I would just add that with our current cabinet and government caucus, the ability to "instantly add credibility and heft to the caucus" isn't really a big selling point.

I have house plants that could ""instantly add credibility and heft" were they added to THAT caucus.
bonneau

"In a proper Westminster system, the leader is selected by the members of the Parliamentary caucus. In our run-down, degraded version of Westminster, the leader picks the caucus."

Roger on that Andrew.
Jay Anderson

Andrew, how do you reconcile your defence of riding associations with your favouring proportional representation?

If I understand proprtional representation corrrectly, there would be no riding associations, just a list of candidates from which the elected members are drawn. And who would determine the selection order of listed candidates? I assume the party leader. Proportional representation would result in a greater centralization of power, not less.
http://intensedebate.com/people/madeyoulook madeyoulook

So which came first, the inability of local riding associations to embrace star candidates, or the parachuting in from head office of star candidates?
http://intensedebate.com/people/DuffConacher DuffConacher

Andrew, you neglect to mention that the Conservatives have taken no steps to keep their 206 election promises to "Ensure that party nomination and leadership races are conducted in a fair, transparent, and democratic manner" and to "Prevent party leaders from appointing candidates without the democratic consent of local electoral district associations."

What would have happened if the spirit of these promises had been kept? The Canada Elections Act would have been changed by adding rules for nomination races preventing party leaders from appointing candidates (except in situations such as when there is no local riding association, or no one running for a nomination), and other rules such as how long you have to be a member of a party to vote in a nomination vote, and probably rules allowing parties to have reasonable criteria people must meet in order to run for a nomination (e.g. no past criminal convictions, agreement to support party platform and policy and only dissent for justifiable reasons), and overall giving Elections Canada the mandate and power to run nomination races in the same way it runs general elections.

Andrew, you also neglected to mention that none of the opposition party leaders have criticized the Conservatives for breaking their promises. Of course, this is the problem — all the party leaders don't want MPs, they want MPLs — Members of Party Leader Supporters, and so they don't want to end their control of nomination races.

The question is, why haven't a critical mass of MPs (30 or so from all parties) banded together to push a private member bill that would change the Canada Elections Act in these ways? They have nothing to lose but their own chains.

See all the details about the Conservatives record on democratic reform and government accountability at: http://www.dwatch.ca/camp/RelsDec1609.html

Hope this helps,
Duff Conacher, Coordinator
Democracy Watch http://www.goodgovernment.ca
A. Clausen

There are several different PR systems out there. Party list systems are one variety, and not a variety I've really seen advocated save by the Greens, who obviously stand to benefit the most by such a system.

Here in BC we almost went with a Single Transferable Vote system, which would have created multi-MLA ridings, but still every single elected representative would have had to stand for election. You wouldn't vote for the party, you would still vote for candidates, ranked by preference. The goal of STV was to still maintain the strengths of the first-past-the-post system by not letting every goofball party like the Marxist-Leninists or the Marijuana Party gain disproportionate power, while still giving smaller but still reasonably popular parties like the Greens or some independents, a shot at winning.

Ultimately there is no such thing as a perfect voting system, it's pretty much mathematically impossible. But you can create voting systems that do a better job of matching popular vote to actual representation and minimize phenomenon like vote splitting, which, here in BC, allowed the NDP to gain a very narrow victory despite getting less of the popular vote than the BC Liberals, followed by an extremely imbalanced election in 2001 which saw the BC NDP reduced to two seats in the Legislature despite still garnering 21% of the popular vote.

And on the topic of the BC NDP and riding associations, it was after some scandals with last-minute sign ups in a number of ridings which forced the party to do the smart thing and require that anyone who wanted a vote on a candidate had to have been a member for a year. I think pretty much every party should do the same, and prevent one of the dirtier tricks used by guys trying to get the nomination.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Be_rad Be_rad

Woof, baby, woof.