"Why do you lead me a wild-goose chase?" Byelection syncronicity: Power to the people

Most of the posting and punditry analysis of the three federal by-elections held this past Monday has focused on the deep meaning or not of possible immediate and longer-term electoral trends that might be indicated by the different results. Discussions, not unexpectedly, centre on traditional by-election turnout levels, profile of the candidates, the rural/urban "divide" and some bits on the resonance of messages or perceived political party ideologies.

I see another set of patterns in these by-elections with implications for all of the political parties and while this may sound counter-intuitive given the poor turnout, these are related to a desire by the public - in the sense of the grassroots, the plebs, the masses - to be closer to the action. 

What are these common threads?

Local is where it's at. All three by-elections were called when their federal representatives chose to take a run at municipal politics. While I don't have the stats, this appears to be part of a trend in recent years of elected officials seeking positions at a "lower" level; a level closer to the people, viz. Joe Fontana, Dawn Black, Jim Watson.  Municipalities in Canada, be they large cities like Winnipeg, mid-sized and fast-growing ones like Vaughan or rural regional service centres like Dauphin, have the most direct impact on our quality of life, on our environment, on our welfare and on our economy.

It is interesting in light of Samara's latest study of the motivations of MPs, that some of our most seasoned chose to offer to serve where they believed they could have a greater impact.

Now, while the low turnout in the by-elections could be simply be a result of voter fatigue stemming from back-to-back elections in those municipalities, I'd posit that it could just as easily be as a result of voters giving more import to and therefore interest in who represents them at the local rather than the federal level.

Grassroots are not involved in candidate choices. Here by "grassroots" I mean both the political party partisan member and the civically-minded engaged citizen. 

In Vaughan, both of the leading candidates, Julian Fantino for the CPC and Tony Genco for the LPC were appointed and regardless the stated reasons there was deemed to be no need for a meeting of the membership.  In the case of the LPC, there hasn't been a meeting of the membership related to the choice of a candidate in over 20 years, the incumbent having been uncontested or "protected" in six general elections. Some have suggested that Mr. Genco (and this is no reflection on his calibre as a candidate whatsoever) was appointed because the Party was unable to convince several others, including former National Director Rocco Rossi to take the plunge.  Shame if that is so, but it also makes one wonder about the state of the riding association if their lack of ability to identify and convince - with much notice - good candidates with local roots to run.  I don't know the circumstances, I admit, but one has to wonder just how engaged the association is with its own citizens relative to its engagement with its MP or national party. Open nominations are great ways to engage the public.  LPC often seems to want to shut them out.

In Winnipeg North, the NDP chalks up their stunning loss of a flagship riding to the fact that their candidate Kevin Chief, while also of high calibre, was less known than the Liberal candidate and ultimate winner, Kevin Lamoureaux.  But they fail to mention, as widely rumoured that their own grassroots refused to participate or participated lamely having been shunned from selecting their own candidate themselves.  Kevin Chief was the choice of the outgoing MP and the party "elite".  Glad to know the NDP have one too.

And guess what? Not that it would or did make much of a difference in Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette (CPC could probably run a stick of wood and still win), Stephen Harper too chose to effectively appoint the candidate, Robert Sopuck, so angering the former MP, Inky Mark, a former Reform MP to boot, that he endorsed the Green Party candidate Kate Storey.

Used to be that local associations of political parties acted to some extent as brokerages for the institutional party with the population both in terms of political expression and representation. Having a say on policy matters and in the choice of candidates was a way to balance power between Party and Public.  What these by-elections illustrate to me is that the public already know where the real power lies.  It lies with the people.

In the immortal words of John Lennon:  right on!

"The ass will carry his load, but not a double load; ride not a free horse to death."

So last week we heard about the Liberal Party's plan to save incumbents from the time and expense of holding nomination meetings - they're awfully busy in Ottawa doncha know - and this week it's the Tories. This is scary stuff (although far from novel) and members in both parties need to address the issue. Scary too when you look at the similarities between what the Liberals said in similar circumstances in 2004 to what Peter Goldring says of the Tory circumstances now.

An October 30, 2004 editorial in the Ottawa Citizen, entitled "Democratic reform was nice while it lasted", described PMPM's announcement about protecting the nominations of incumbent MP’s – in October, remember they had been elected in June and the House had barely resumed – before any of the “new ones” had even been given a chance to prove, to either their own constituents, or to the party “members” who nominated them in the first place, whether they were worthy of re-election, re-nomination or both. What was the motivation for this action? According to the editorial a spokesperson for the Prime Minister (presumably commenting in capacity as spokesperson for the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada) said that “it’s to keep [Liberal MP’s] from having to worry about rivals organizing against them at home while they’re trapped in the House of Commons making sure the government wins parliamentary votes.” Key word: trapped.

Now look at Goldring's words in the Hill Times of this week:

"Mr. Goldring said in a minority Parliament trying to address the ongoing economic crisis it's critical for MPs to be able to focus on their work and be available in Ottawa for crucial House votes that could topple their government, without having to be worried about watching their backs.

"It takes time and anything that takes time away from them [MPs], if their focus has to be on doing work in the riding as well as working here, it's certainly much better to spend your time working on issues here that are for the people rather than just trying to spend time increasing your chances of being nominated or working on memberships because you're trying to protect your nomination," said Mr. Goldring."

And, of course as noted above, we have a not-so-new new internal policy from ILMI that says incumbents will be protected only if they meet certain membership and grassroots fundraising thresholds (400 members (adjusted for region) and 40 Victory Fund members). The CPC would be wise not to take lessons from the LPC in this regard.

You know, it's not that we don't get the logic of all this. It's just that it is sooo undemocratic. Considering that there are many MP's, most certainly in the Liberal Party as well as the CPC who haven't faced a real nomination since their first divissive slugfests many moons ago. A Party nomination is not a Senate seat - it's not an appointment for life (oops silly naiive me, there I go again!) It's just that we don't want to put them through the bother.

Wouldn't you think that ridings with MP's would always have healthy memberships so they shouldn't have to worry? (Note careful phraseology here: I did not say MP's with healthy memberships; the members are not the MP's, they are the Party's and the ridings'.) And so what if they did?! I think most members in held ridings looove their MPs and vice versa. A healthy membership that wishes to turf their nominated candidate should have the same right as the electorate does (and the electorate does fairly often; there's a farily high incumbency turnover rate in Canada compared to many other jursidiction such as in the US, where incumbents must always be re-nominated (primaries), but I kinda digress...).

I know that the original premise for incumbency protection, as was the case for the Leader's "right" to appoint, had its genesis in takeover attempts by various "special interest groups" in the days where a Liberal nomination East of Manitoba pretty much secured one a seat - or at minimum a very competitive crack at one, but those problems themselves came more themselves from a genesis of manipulated and truncated membership voting rules including brief and moving-target cut-off periods. Reactions to undemocratic processes with even more undemocratic processes - hmmm, isn't there a word for that?

Instead of continuing this charade, why don't we just fix the real problems? There are two things that ILMI and the National Executive and the Campaign Committee and all the other mucky mucks who run this stuff could consider to make Quixotique feel a little more listened to and a little less hot under the collar. And they're not biggies.

Firstly, if you must put in place incumbency protection for this one very last time give it a sunset clause timed for any election (and obvisouly nomination process) initiated after the conclusion of the Biennial Convention in Vancouver, where, whether binding or not, Party members just might like to have their say on some of this stuff and maybe even put in place a more democratic membership-nomination regime, or at least a sanctioned one.

Secondly, while the thresholds, if they represent minimum expectations, ain't necessarily a bad thing for MP's, impose a regime, where, as now, any incumbent not meeting the thresholds may be contested, but also where the membership in held ridings where the thresholds are met, will be the ones to decide. Let them decide if their MP can be contested or not. What a way to work together (always work together).

UPDATE: Well someone out there agrees with me!

UPDATE 2: And they did again, and um again, kinda.