Any person aged 14 and over who signs up for a Liberal membership card 41 days or more before the leadership vote can have a direct say in the selection of the country’s next prime minister.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
It has come to our attention over the past few years that Canada has a foreign interference problem, and that a key vulnerability is the lax rules governing federal-party nomination and leadership campaigns.
Maybe you heard about it, too. If so, could you please let the Liberal Party of Canada know? Its brain trust appears not to have a clue and so far is not rewriting its membership rules to shield its upcoming leadership race from meddling.
That race, necessitated by Justin Trudeau’s impending resignation, will not be just any leadership contest, because the winner will automatically become prime minister of Canada.
In spite of that, a party spokesman confirmed this week that the Liberals have no immediate plans to tighten membership eligibility rules that were put in place long before the shadow of foreign interference fell across the land.
If left unchanged, the rules will mean any person aged 14 and over who signs up for a Liberal membership card 41 days or more before the leadership vote (date yet to be determined) can have a direct say in the selection of the country’s next prime minister.
There is no requirement for them to be citizens or permanent residents of Canada. They simply need to “ordinarily live” here, a vague qualification that the party says includes foreign students and any of the other three million non-permanent residents currently in the country.
Among the acceptable proofs of ordinarily living in Canada required by the party are such highly secure documents as a library card and a student ID (has anyone ever counterfeited a student ID?), plus “correspondence or timetable issued by a school, college, or university” that confirms the existence of a Canadian address.
All the prospective member needs beyond that is an e-mail address or a phone number. Unlike other parties, there is no fee to join the Liberals and thus no traceable receipt to better establish one’s bona fides.
The Liberals defend their easygoing rules as a shining example of grassroots democracy that opens up the political process to more people and encourages participation. Fair enough. But, on the downside, it opens up the political process to more people and encourages participation rather indiscriminately at a time when China and India are intent on sticking their fingers into Canada’s electoral system.
The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) reported last March on “two specific instances where [Chinese] officials allegedly interfered in the leadership races of the Conservative Party of Canada.” It also described “India’s alleged interference” in a Conservative leadership race.
The committee further said its 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 nomination campaigns.
The initial report from the inquiry into foreign interference led by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, released in May, warned of precisely the same problem. In particular, it referred to 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 2019 and told to vote for a state-favoured candidate.
As we’ve said before, all the parties are guilty of having lax rules that increase the possibility of foreign interference in their nomination and leadership races. But the Liberal Party’s are particularly lax and not up to the moment, given what is at stake in its upcoming leadership race.
Only Canadian citizens normally have a say in which party forms government and who will serve as prime minister; permanent residents aren’t allowed to vote in federal elections.
If the Liberals want to extend that right to permanent residents in the case of their leadership race, so be it; other parties do that as well. But for the sake of the integrity of the process, they should stop there, and also increase the age limit to 18 out of deference to regular eligible voters.
Doing so would send the message that the Liberal Party won’t brook foreign interference, and that it respects the significance of the outcome of its leadership race.
On the other hand, it could do nothing and reinforce the view held by so many Canadians that the party is out of touch with this country – the very thing that made the leadership race necessary in the first place.