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

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Out There

Ah, but will she be willing to do what Stephen Harper and the PMO tell her to do? There have been a few high-profile Conservatives that haven't managed to clear that hurdle.
http://intensedebate.com/people/OntarioTown OntarioTown

I guess I wasn't clear – whether it's municipal, provincial or federal – small towns pick folks they know, related to, etc.
Wascally Wabbit

Andrew – a bit of background information might help you reconsider your position somewhat. When she first elected, Helena's riding association was a blend of old progressive conservatives (including members of her extended family – who are close to the predominant voters in that riding – and a group with more of a Reform bent. Soon after her initial win, rumour has it that Helena asked the riding association to pay for her "personal perquisites". A good deal of execitive members baulked at this – and when she was insistent – resigned in protest. Most who resigned seemed – as far as I can gather – to be of the more progressive conservative ilk. The ones remaining seem to be closely connected to her family…not surprising that they remain loyal to the lady!
bylo

And here we all thought that Harper's roots were in the grass, er, grassroots. This is one more manifestation of his utter contempt for anything open, accountable or democratic if it interferes with his ruthless quest for a majority.

Stand up Canada! Demand better.
Wascally Wabbit

And just for balance – Helena won her riding from a Liberal – Paul Bonwick – who rode into Parliament on Jean Chretien's coattails. Bonwick's initial campaign was run by a very smart campaign team – who were part of the riding association. When HE was elected – he asked his riding association to pay for HIS "perquisites". They too declined. Bonwick's response was to engineer an AGM meeting – where he stacked the deck and brought in members – largely of his own family – to replace the team who got him elected. Bottom line – while I agree with your premise that the ridings should pick their own candidates – there are shortcomings to that democratic process – largely due to the lethargy of the average voter out there!
http://intensedebate.com/people/ruralroutes ruralroutes

How insulting a comment! Since you live in rural Ontario, I assume you are talking about yourself, not your neighbours.
Great Walls of Fire

And what exactly would you describe Canada as having been under the open and egalitarian leadership of Da Little Guy From Shawinigan? As a user of PMO power to further bald political ambition, Harper can't hold a candle to Chretien – remember the federal election called for the sole purpose of screwing with Paul Martin?

Lord Kitchener's Own

As a user of PMO power to further bald political ambition, Harper can't hold a candle to Chretien.

On the contrary, Harper is building on Chretien's legacy, as Chretien built on Mulroney before him, and the next PM (of any stripe) will doubtless simply keep right on building. What's impressive about Harper is how vociferous and sincere he seemed when claiming to be different (and a new hope for accountability and transparency) and how quickly he managed to fall into the pattern of concentrating and consolidating power in the PMO as those before him had done. He seemed least likely to build on the dubious legacy of previous PM's, and yet was incredibly efficient in doing so once in power. Harper seemed like the antithesis of Chretien when in opposition, but in reality he morphed into Chretien much faster than Chretien morphed into Mulroney, imho. Hell, point number one in the great big book of Tory talking points is now "It's OK because Chretien used to do it".

The speed with which the Tories pivoted from using Chretien as an example of all that is wrong with Canada, to using Chretien as a foundation upon which to build was stunning. I can't even remember the last time a conservative brought up Chretien in a context other than "we're just following in the footsteps of…"

Craig O

I don't buy the argument that riding associations not being allowed choosing their own representatives is an affront to local democracy, mostly because there's no reason individual parties need to be democratic within their own structure. However a party chooses its candidates is up to them, the democracy element comes in the general election. If they put forth a bad candidate, I won't vote for that person, nor should anyone else who also believes that person to be a bad candidate.

We see in the US what happens when parties "do the democratic thing" in picking the party candidates through primaries. The candidates that come out of the process don't seem to be of high quality, or at least not higher quality than we have here. With Guergis, it's more than obvious that she would be a bad candidate for the Conservative Party. Her riding association may want her, but that doesn't make her a good candidate – if she wants to run, she's still welcome to do so as an independent, and if the riding association wants to support here, I don't think anything's stopping them from dropping their positions within the Conservative party to do so. There's no subversion of democracy there – the people of Simcoe-Grey can still elect her. Whether she represents the Conservative Party as a whole, however, is up to the the federal Conservative Party – just as her inclusion in the Conservative caucus now is not up to her riding association, but rather to the Conservative brass.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Be_rad Be_rad

Out on a limb, here, but I thinkk Cats may be having a larff.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Be_rad Be_rad

I htink it would be more accurate to say that riding associations aren't uniformly good or uniformly incompetent. That we can count on some to do the right thing and not on others, regardless of the system in place. However, if participation rates in a locall association are high, then RAs will be held to account which leads to MPs being held to account etc…

Selection criteria would be one fo the most interesting places to start if we were to get to the point AC is promoting. Do we want MPs who are independent, thoughtful leaders, capable of assessing issues and reflecting the community values of their riding, or do we want slaves to the local riding? If slaves to the local riding, do we want them slaves to the local party members who elected them, or the whole riding? (Remember, successful candidates are often elected by less than 40% of the riding).

Like any kind of reform of a public institution, the devil is in the details. Are we capable as a society of thinking about and getting those details right?
http://intensedebate.com/people/LynnTO LynnTO

Well, there was JM, who would use prose from time to time, and then there's God, who likes to speak in the third person…
Cats

Yeah but we've seen riding associations being taken over the rabble organized over the internet.

Like in the case of Anders. A bunch of left wing activsts staged a coup!

Cats and Anders, Anders and cats, both have 9 lives despite attacks from the left!
http://intensedebate.com/people/M_A_N M_A_N

I spent a lot of time covering assorted small-town council meetings back in the day. He's being generous.
Orson Bean

Way to stay on point.

You know, it's well worth pointing out that this problem — rogue/embarrassing candidate put up by local riding association process — is hardly unique to the current CPC. In British Columbia, the NDP, both at the federal and provincial level, has had a few doozies of its own (e.g., nominating a practising witch).
Andre

Breathing.
A. Clausen

Brown has been the subject of a number of revolts, and now that it's seeming more likely that Britain will have a hung parliament with David Cameron as PM, I imagine you're going to find more private and semi-private musings on the lack of performance by Brown. That's the nature of a party in our system in crisis. Much worse happened to Thatcher, who found herself without a job when her caucus openly revolted against her. In Canada, of course, the parties have much more control than they do in Britain, which has retained some of the more positive elements of the 19th century Westminster system.
http://intensedebate.com/people/tobyornotoby tobyornotoby

and a little short on benevolence.
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.
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
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
Dave

You need to look up "parachute candidate" in the Big Dictionary of Canadian Politics.
Cats

Above comment applies to you too !
Anon ABC

Usually people who are really good and qualified for a job have difficulty putting up with a boss who insists on my way or the highway, don't you think?
http://intensedebate.com/people/tobyornotoby tobyornotoby

I've always taken parachute candidate to mean some facilitated access to power, picking a winnable riding for a star candidate who doesn't live there. Finding a willing standard bearer in a no-win riding is either a thankless task or at best prep school for young candidates.
http://intensedebate.com/people/OntarioTown OntarioTown

Not in the least – it's a fact.