Who gets to run?

Yeehaw.

The logo of the convention, which I totally stole from the Conservatives’ website, is actually very cute. Well done, whoever did it.

In addition to the leadership review of a certain P. Poilievre and its implications for national politics, about which I shall have more to say this weekend, the convention will review, discuss, debate and vote on a number of resolutions.

The one I’ll be watching is about the nomination process, deemed too centrally-controlled by a lot of party members. Here is the rationale:

Each electoral district association (EDA) is constitutionally “the primary organization through which the rights of members are exercised” (Article 5.1) and each local candidate nomination committee (CNC) is constitutionally the body responsible “for the administration of the candidate selection process in the electoral district” (Article 14.2). But these rights require explicit constitutional elaboration and protection to prevent their further erosion due to the historical willingness of the National Candidate Selection Committee (NCSC) to

1. permit nomination applicants to evade proper scrutiny by local CNCs, by both withholding their application packages and allowing them to decline a CNC interview, and

2. to countermand the express wishes of CNCs in their approving or rejecting nomination applicants for candidacy.

The proposed modification to Article 14.2 seeks first to balance more carefully and explicitly NCSC’s oversight role with an EDA’s “right to administer” their candidate selection process, insisting that NCSC should override the EDA’s recommendation only rarely and always with consultation and explicit justification and accountability. If there is a concern about confidentiality regarding this proposal, then it should be sufficient to point out that CNC Chairs, already operating under a confidentiality agreement, are no more or less likely to be indiscreet than members of National Council. The second concern of this proposed modification to Article 14.2 relates to treating nomination candidates fairly. We cannot continue with a situation in which, routinely, certain nomination candidates get to start their campaigns many days and even weeks before others.

Politics is a people business, and leaders (and journalists) often forget about the people who actually breathe life in various parties. Folks who are concerned, interested and passionate enough to devote resources to electoral politics want to contribute, and not just be told what to do by leaders and their top advisors or staffers. That’s even more true of populist parties, which the Conservative Party kind of is, especially in the west.

We recently saw that the party’s national council had decided Damien Kurek would run in Battle River-Crowfoot instead of Poilievre, which suggests the leader does not have a lot of influence over the council. If party members vote to rebalance nomination powers by giving EDAs more authority, then it might create a little bit of chaos for Poilievre at the next election, should he decide to hold onto his job long enough for that.

This is healthy politics as far as I’m concerned. It’s not great for anyone who’d like to exercise tight control over the Conservative Party…