The race to lead the Conservative Party of Canada has yet to get formally under way, but by the time it does it may already have been decided, to some extent. Some candidates will have been assigned the inside track, some the outside, and some disqualified, without a vote, without a hearing, indeed without even having declared their candidacy.
The instrument of this informal seeding process? Not the membership, nor the party’s elected National Council, but a shadowy body of appointees known as the Leadership Election Organizing Committee. It is the LEOC that sets the rules for the race, and it is the rules, as much as anything else, that can spell the difference between victory and defeat for a candidate.
Although appointed barely two weeks, the committee has already issued one of its most significant decisions: The election will be held on June 27. (Or at least, it will end on that date – members can vote for several days before then.) So already the field will have been narrowed somewhat. A shorter race would have favoured some candidates, particularly those with superior name recognition, while a longer race may have given others the edge.
The committee will soon decide when the race officially begins, another important decision, since that’s when the rules governing the raising and spending of funds kick in. And all sorts of other matters besides: the cut-off date for signing up new members, how many debates will be held and when, and so on, all of them potentially helpful to some campaigns and harmful to others.
Most critically, the committee sets the entry conditions for candidates. Reportedly, it will set a high bar this time, to avoid the sort of crowded field we saw in 2017, the last occasion the Conservatives had to elect a leader. A $300,000 registration fee will be required, according to the CBC, plus the signatures of 3,000 supporters, both multiples of the comparable figures in 2017. Why $300,000? Why 3,000? Who knows? It’s up to the committee.
Membership on the LEOC is therefore a position of considerable power, and lobbying the committee’s 17 members presumably a matter of some priority for prospective candidates: the race before the race. Yet there are no rules governing that competition, which takes place entirely behind closed doors.
Who appoints the LEOC? The National Council. On what basis? On any basis it pleases. What sorts of rules may the LEOC devise? Again, any it likes. The basic format of the election may be set out in the party constitution – direct election by party members, on a preferential ballot, with each riding given 100 points to divide up between the candidates based on their share of the vote in that riding – but everything else is left to the committee’s discretion. Indeed, it can change the rules at any time, for any reason.
Well, all right. Let’s suppose the rules were being set in the interests of the party, and not of this or that candidate or faction. What sort might the committee choose? I have two suggestions. One, the vote should be restricted to those who have been members of the party for at least a year. The practice of using leadership races as membership drives, thereby letting busloads of instant members with no attachment to the party or concern for its welfare pick the leader, has got to stop.
Two, in addition to – or as a substitute for – the other entrance requirements, stipulate that a candidate must have the support of a certain number of members of caucus. They are, after all, the people the leader actually leads, and should be accountable to. The same logic would suggest the leader should in fact be elected by the caucus, but this would at least ensure he or she was not utterly repugnant to them.
Reining in the power of the leader is about more than restoring party democracy. It is also about the kind of party he or she will lead. A great number of Conservatives are yearning for a more principled, ideas-based party, one that will hold to its course rather than trim its sails after every passing poll. But so long as the party is, effectively, an extension of the leader, that cannot happen: It will stand, at any moment, for whatever the leader stands for.
This election, in other words, is an opportunity not just to elect a leader, but to define a new relationship between leader, caucus and party, and if it takes a coven of unelected backroom operators to rig things that way, I am all for it.