A voter casts a ballot in the 2011 federal election in Toronto on May 2, 2011.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The way federal political parties nominate their election candidates in each riding is often referred to as the “wild west,” and for good reason. It’s a free-for-all, with no consistent rules from party to party, no independent scrutiny of the voting process, and almost everything done at the whim of party leaders.
As if to reinforce that last point, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this month ignored local organizers and unilaterally named the person who will stand as the Liberal candidate in a Montreal by-election that has to be called by July 30.
That left three other would-be Liberal candidates out in the cold and upset. They thought there would be a democratic contest for the job; they hadn’t gotten the memo that democracy in party nominations is only permitted when it’s convenient for the boss.
Every party operates the same way and none apologize for it, even if the practice evokes 19th-century ward-heelers, their thumbs under their suspenders, puffing on cigars and rigging nominations in smoky alehouses.
The parties’ nostalgia for a simpler time uncomplicated by rules or fairness was always a problem. But now, with China and India determined to interfere in federal elections, wild-west nomination contests are proving to be a weak point in the defence of Canadian democracy.
The shocking report released last month by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) said committee members were “disturbed to learn how easily foreign actors take advantage of loopholes and vulnerabilities in political party governance and administration to support preferred candidates.”
In one instance, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has said it has credible evidence that Chinese foreign students organized by actors with links to the People’s Republic of China were bused into a Liberal nomination meeting in Toronto in 2019 and told to vote for a preferred candidate.
Nomination contests, unlike elections, are largely unregulated by the Canada Elections Act. There is no verification, other than by the parties, of the residency status and age of electors, or of whether those electors are actual party members. What’s more, there is not even a requirement that those voting in nomination contests be Canadian citizens.
To understand just how few regulations there are, you only have to read a discussion paper that Elections Canada recently drafted for chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault as he prepares recommendation that he will make to the inquiry into foreign interference led by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue later this year.
Those recommendations include precautions so basic that it is breathtaking to realize they don’t already exist. Recommendations such as: explicitly outlawing voting more than once; barring non-citizens from voting; making it illegal to induce an ineligible person to vote or to bribe eligible voters; banning the bulk purchase of party memberships or using party funds to pay for them; and actually writing down the rules for nomination contests, such as who is eligible to vote and what sort of ID they have to provide in order to do so.
Those recommendations will not go anywhere, of course, unless politicians look past the interests of their parties.
NSICOP said in its report that the government should “engage all political parties to determine whether party nomination processes should be included within the framework of the Canada Elections Act, subject to monitoring by Elections Canada and the Office of the Commissioner for Canada Elections.”
That will be a tough sell. The federal parties have long colluded on the idea that they should be exempt from any sort of independent oversight or legislated structure. They have for years been doing their best to exempt their membership lists from provincial and federal privacy laws, for instance.
But there is room for compromise. An Elections Canada spokesperson said Wednesday that the agency has no intention of administering nomination contests on behalf of the parties; it is simply looking for legislative changes that could minimize the risk of foreign interference while respecting the parties’ autonomy.
There’s a fair middle ground in there, and the parties should work with Elections Canada to achieve it. It is long past time for them to join the civilized world that everyone else inhabits, and play by a set of reasonable rules that could make our democracy safer.