Liberal leadership procedure and process update from Mike Crawley

Today was the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario)’s Toronto region day, where Liberals from the ridings of greater Toronto gathered to  talk organization, policy and rebuilding. A few items of interest to share, particularly on the leadership front.

Speaking of leadership, as I believe in full disclosure I’ll say that I’m supporting Deborah Coyne for the leadership and have been helping on her (pre)campaign since mid-summer.(I’ll write more about why I’m supporting Deborah and what I like about her platform and vision soon.) So I’ll naturally be careful and selective in my leadership commentary, and I’ll try to stick to reporting what others said in this post rather than offering too much commentary. Let me stress though that any opinions expressed on my blog are, as always, mine and mine alone.

Anyway, today our post-lunch speaker was Liberal Party of Canada president Mike Crawley, who gave attendees an update on where things are at with the leadership process. I’ll assume you’ve read the rules that were posted recently as far as entry fee and spending caps, so I won’t  rehash that. He did share some new items of interest though, but I’ll stress these items are still fluid and aren’t yet official. I’d guess he was discussing the evolving thinking of the adhoc rules committee (committee member Christine Innes was also present), which will make recommendations that must be approved (and could be modified) by the national board. So it’s all subject to change.

First, he indicated the leadership vote will probably be an online and telephone vote, instead of physical paper balloting. I’ve written previously about the challenges of both systems, and the importance of verifying the identity of the voter, and that the vote is cast by them and without coercion. The details of how that vetting will happen and security assured are still being determined.

Second, Crawley and Innes floated the idea of a $1 or $2 vote fee to cover the cost of the voting system. It’s unclear if this would apply to members and supporters, or just supporters. We're not talking about a fee to attend a debate (there would likely be a cost-recovery fee for attending the debates, and the speech showcase events, and that's generally accepted), but to cast your vote, whether online or over the phone.

The reaction to this idea in the room was pretty negative. One person likened it to a poll tax, while others noted it ran contrary to the whole spirit of the supporter system (all our literature around supporter signup touts how it’s easy and free and you get to vote for leader). It was also suggested by one questioner that the $75,000 entry fee for leadership candidates and 10 per cent cut of all donations to leadership candidates taken by the party was meant to cover the costs of running the race. Crawley and Innes indicated though they wanted those funds for general revenue as it will be difficult for the party itself to raise money during the race, and they still wanted to consider recovering leadership vote expenses in another way.

Third, there will be five leadership debates across Canada from January to March. Cities to be announced, but the string will end in March in Montreal. Each will have different formats and themes. Then, the final major leadership speech event will be in Toronto on April 6^th. Immediately after the speeches, voting will likely open and remain open for the following week. There may be the option to vote onsite at the event after the speeches are over (likely on laptop stations, as the NDP did) and ridings will be encouraged to hold their own voting events during the week. And then, at another event in Ottawa on April 14^th, the results will be announced and the new leader will give her or his maiden speech to the nation.

In other more minor notes, he affirmed that while he may have wanted to shorten it, as I wrote last week the 41-day cutoff for supporter and member sign-ups is a constitutional requirement. The suggestion of an extraordinary convention (a la last summer) to amend that requirement that wasn’t looked on favourably by Crawley and Innes, due to the need for time to allow the party to verify supporter and member identities.

Other notes

Those were the major news items on the leadership front. Over lunch, Borys Wrzesnewskyj gave us an update on Etobicoke-Centre. In short, no idea when the Supreme Court will finally rule on Ted Opitz’s appeal of the ruling Borys won in the lower court. But while Opitz and the Conservatives are blanketing the riding with taxpayer-funded mailers (and launching robocalls), he says the Liberals are actively canvassing door to door and at events and meeting people, speaking about the last election and the court challenge, and getting very good feedback.

Finally, we elected members to the communications, organization and policy committees of the LPC’s Ontario wing. Most of the races were hotly contested, but I had the good fortune to be acclaimed as the member of the communications committee for Area 3 (the east side of Toronto, essentially Scarborough and Don Valley). I’m looking forward to working with the ridings in my area to help us communicate better, both to our fellow Liberals and the general public.

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Will Joe Volpe follow in Borys Wrzesnewskyj's footsteps in Eglington-Lawrence?

Former Etobocoke-Centre Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj has won headlines for his legal challenge to force a by-election due to election irregularities, and it appears another former Liberal MP, Joe Volpe, may be considering following suit.

Wrzesnewskyj won an Ontario Superior Court ruling ordering a new election in the riding after irregularities that put the narrow victory of Conservative Ted Opitz in doubt. The Supreme Court of Canada is scheduled to hear Opitz's appeal in a rare summer sitting next month, but I'm told his appeal has raised little in the way of new arguments or specific faults with the lower court judgement.

Across town in Eglington-Lawrence, former Liberal MP Joe Volpe's loss was a fair bit wider than Wrzesnewskyj's, finishing over 4,000 votes behind Conservative Joe Oliver. But in a recent e-mail to Liberals, Volpe indicated he is also investigating alleged irregularities with the results.

...during the election, our campaign in Eglinton-Lawrence was the first to raise the warning flags associated will illegal suppression tactics: misleading, harassing phone calls; thousands of instant voters registered with bogus info; robocalls; and abusive scrutineers who turned away elderly voters at polling stations. Elections Canada has been slow to address the issues we raised more than a year ago.

Our riding association is exhausting its resources to investigate and find answers. To help, we have set up a fund to continue that effort, and I ask for your consideration in making a contribution to the riding association to assist in that effort. 

It's not entirely clear to me if these efforts are expected to lead to a legal challenge or what form the investigation or a challenge may take. It may just be a cleverly worded riding association fundraising pitch. I've heard concerns raised in a number of Toronto-area ridings about the conduct of the last election and while Wrzesnewskyj lost by 26 votes, Volpe would have a far harder road ahead of him. A by-election seems highly unlikely, but certainly any possible improprieties deserve to be investigated and the situation in Eglington-Lawrence will bear watching.

Oh, and for those advocating for high spending limits in the upcoming Liberal leadership race, Volpe's e-mail also included a separate request for donations to help retire his leadership debt. From 2006.

P.S. In this video I shot last week at his nomination meeting, Wrzesnewskyj discusses his legal challenge and why the probably upcoming by-election is so important.

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Borys Wrzesnewskyj: This election is about fixing the system

On Tuesday evening I attended the nomination meeting for Borys Wrzesnewskyj as the Liberal candidate in Etobicoke-Centre where, if an Ontario Superior Court ruling holds, a by-election will be held due to irregularities uncovered in the voting in 2011 that, given the small margin of victory of Conservative Ted Opitz, put the actual result of the election into doubt.

It was a packed room as they say, although it was also a particularly small room. But Wrzesnewskyj said it was important to him that the meeting be held at the St. Demetrius Seniors Residence, because it was here during the election that many seniors lost their right to vote. According to affidavits filed by Elections Canada officials that worked the poll that day, a Conservative representative disrupted the voting and "suddenly started screaming and waving his arms wildly ... He was raging in a bullying fashion, which caused confusion, and frightened many voters."

Wrzesnewskyj spoke passionately and at length about the importance of making sure everyone has the right and opportunity to vote, and how that’s a right that shouldn’t be denied. It’s clear he intends to make faith in the democratic process a key campaign theme, referencing incidents not just in Etobicoke-Centre but across the country. When he knocks on doors, he says it’s all people want to talk about.

I spoke with him after the meeting for a quick video interview, where he expanded on these issues. Here’s a key quote:

“This election is about fixing the system, and hopefully fixing it before the next federal election. Because this cannot happen again in Canada.”

The passion and emotion Wrzesnewskyj has for this (he has funded the appeals process himself) as a matter of principle is clear, and it was definitely shared by the seniors that packed the room. I do hope that once on the trail he’ll broaden the message to also speak to other policy issues, and I’m sure he will. It’s sure to be a hard-fought race, possibly as tight as the 26-vote margin we saw in 2011.

In the interim, all eyes are on the Supreme Court to see if they’ll take the case and, if so, when.

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The Conservative mask is slipping

The polls open in less than 24 hours, but despite running a bubble campaign that has seen at least 119 Conservative candidate muzzlings and a Prime Minister in Stephen Harper that is no longer deigning to answer questions from members of the media, the true face of the Conservative agenda is beginning to show.

For example, there's Dean Del Mastro, the Conservative candidate for Peterborough, who in this video tells a pro-abortion rally on Parliament Hill. Del Mastro assures the crowd that the abortion "issues matters and is not going away" and that the abortion "laws will change in this country." (h/t) No matter what Harper says (when he is willing to actually speak to people) his caucus clearly has other ideas on abortion:



Then there's Peter Kent, the former Conservative TeleVision (CTV) anchor running again as a star Conservative candidate in Thornhill. In a recent debate, Kent called for more private clinics in Canada, a dangerous move towards a two-tier health care system for Canada where there's one system for the rich (who can afford to follow Stephen Harper's stock tips) and another for the rest of us. Once again, Harper's flimsy promises are overridden by his own caucus:

A Conservative candidate's suggestion that a private clinic be used as a model for health delivery across Canada prompted opposition charges that Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to expand for-profit health care outside the public system.

Peter Kent made the comment during a recent campaign debate in Toronto's Thornhill riding.

Besides letting their ultra-conservative mask slip, the Conservatives are also staying classy on the campaign trail. Like Luc Harvey, the Quebec Conservative MP that showed up at a BQ campaign event to shout at and heckle Gilles Duceppe. Remember when Preston Manning wanted to restore decorum to Ottawa? I do.

A Conservative MP crashed a Bloc Québécois campaign event in Quebec City today, haranguing Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe who was shaking hands and meeting voters at a local market.

Conservative candidate Luc Harvey narrowly won by 231 votes in the riding of Louis-Hébert in 2006, and is fighting for his political life in the face of polls that predict a Bloc victory in his riding in Tuesday's election.

As Mr. Duceppe talked to farmers and clients at the Marché Public de Sainte-Foy, Mr. Harvey walked up from behind and asked Mr. Duceppe to say what he has accomplished since his election in 1990.

“Tell us about your record,” Mr. Harvey shouted.

There's also Axel Kuhn, the Conservative candidate in Etobicoke-Centre, who distributed a flyer attacking Liberal incumbent Borys Wrzesnewskyj that contained out and out lies, attacking him for not attending committees he's not even a member of, or that don't even exist.

What does it take for an Ontario Superior Judge to leave his Thanksgiving dinner to grant an emergency injunction? Ask Axel Kuhn, the Conservative candidate in Etobicoke Centre, whose latest electoral advertising effort seems to cross the line into actual defamation, according to Justice G. R. Strathy, who earlier today took the rare step of barring Kuhn’s campaign from distributing campaign literature targeting his Liberal rival, incumbent MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

And then there's Stephen Harper himself, who delayed his campaign schedule last week and held his first impromptu press conference to attack Stephane Dion for being unable to answer a poorly-worded question in his second language.

I don't buy their smokescreen that he couldn't answer the question because "he has no plan" for the economy. He has been talking about his plan for weeks before Harper even introduced his platform. The plan was expanded with the "30-day plan, unveiled in the French-language debate, a plan Harper attacked as a sign Dion was "panicking" on the economy.

How, prey tell, could Dion be panicking by releasing a plan when he doesn't even have a plan? The Conservative talking points are tripping over themselves. They make no sense. Their presser was about insinuating that because Dion's English isn't perfect (it's better then that CTV interviewer's though), he's not fit to lead our country. I even heard a Conservative radio ad the other day that used the line "can you imagine him representing us on the world stage?" Real nice. I'm sure this message will go over real well with all the Canadians for whom English is their second language.

It's a good thing for Conservatives that Canadians are more understanding of Harper's difficulties with French:



We're also more understanding of Stephen Harper's problems with English. Unless we're really voting on February 14th:



And unless he really gave us $300,000 in tax breaks (I'm still waiting for my cheque, by the way Steve):



This has been one of the most mean-spirited campaigns I've seen in years run by the Conservatives, and one that has been based almost entirely on lies. They lie about our climate change plan, they like about our massive tax cuts, they say we'll cut the child care subsidy when we'll really increase it, they say we'll raise the GST when we said no such thing and that indeed we will not, they put out attack fliers filled with lies that Ontario Superior Court judges have to interrupt their turkey dinners to issue injunctions against. They display no empathy for ordinary Canadians worried about their jobs and their savings and offer no plan for the economy besides buying bargain stocks. Their candidates refuse to attend all-candidates meetings or talk to the media, and their "leader" even turtles for the last days of the campaign, afraid he might go off script and say something he actually believes.

Do we really want more of this?

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