A number of Conservatives have called for the party brass to investigate new claims that the nomination process is 'corrupt'.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
When former columnist Sabrina Maddeaux announced last week that she was suspending her campaign for a Conservative Party nomination in the riding of Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill because of a “corrupted” process, a number of Conservatives posted calls for party brass to investigate.
Isn’t that cute?
It’s hard to know the whole truth behind Ms. Maddeaux’s allegations that a competing candidate was given access to party-membership lists before she was – an advantage in an intra-party race – and that the lists were used to conduct a smear campaign against her.
What we know for sure is that party HQ jumped into action to dismiss her claims – Conservative spokesperson Sarah Fischer called them “completely false” – and effectively told Ms. Maddeaux to pound salt.
Unnamed Conservative sources told several new outlets that Ms. Maddeaux, until January a columnist with the National Post, had sold only 50 memberships, implying she was a sore loser. Ms. Maddeaux contested that number and posted messages of support from Conservatives on X.
Luckily for the Conservative Party, all this hubbub will fade away. Ms. Fischer and the other folks at party HQ must know that from experience. By now, we all should.
The system of nomination races for major parties, Liberal and Conservative, is pretend democracy. When it works, it’s about signing up members and packing a meeting room. But there have been heaps of questionable tales in both parties of questionable campaign practices, rule manipulation and party brass putting their fingers on the scale.
The idea that Conservative Party HQ would launch a transparent investigation so they could get to the bottom of alleged abuses in a nomination race – Ms. Maddeaux’s or anyone else’s – is almost amusing. It’s like asking the police in Casablanca to investigate whether there is gambling at Rick’s Café.
Results? That’s not Ottawa’s business
Whether it’s a sore loser or a manipulated contest, the public will always be told that there is nothing to see.
Last year, a party organizer, Arpan Khanna, parachuted into the southwest Ontario riding of Oxford and the perceived front-runner, Gerrit Van Dorland, was disqualified for failing to disclose information to the party. Another candidate in that race, Deb Tait, said she was concerned the race had been fixed. Nothing to see there. Mr. Khanna is now the MP.
In Richmond Hill South, erstwhile Conservative nomination candidate Kaveh Shahrooz withdrew after the party announced a nomination race for Feb. 21, but set the cutoff for signing up members who could vote only two days later. In Eglinton-Lawrence, the president of the Conservative riding association wrote a letter to party HQ in February complaining that nomination candidates’ applications were suddenly shut down in 24 hours and some people were told they should not run for the nomination. Nothing to see.
The high-flying Conservatives are seeing the lion’s share of the nomination controversies now, when there are a number of hotly contested nominations in winnable seats – and allegations that Pierre Poilievre’s party HQ is trying to control them. But the Liberals have seen their share of similar controversies in the past.
These things tend to fade away.
But it’s worth remembering now that this is the unaccountable system that Canada’s major political parties are defending. Because it is facing new questions.
The public inquiry on foreign interference heard evidence that Chinese international high school students voted in the 2019 Liberal nomination of Don Valley North MP Han Dong, now an independent MP, and intelligence suggested they might have received false documents from a Beijing proxy or faced veiled threats from Chinese officials. Mr. Dong said he did not know about those things.
The head of the inquiry, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, raised concerns nomination races are vulnerable. Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault has suggested Elections Canada might take on a role in overseeing nomination races.
The big political parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, will fight that. They want to retain control. They don’t want Elections Canada telling them the rules for nominations.
But if they want to insist on their role in running nominations, you’d think they’d do a lot better. They have run questionable races and made arbitrary decisions on rules in a system of pretend democracy that offers little or no public accountability. There isn’t much to defend.