Calgary (Wild) West MP Rob Anders is probably most famous, or infamous, for being the only member in the House of Commons to oppose making Nelson Mandela an honorary citizen of Canada in 2001. He explained at the time that he believed Mandela was a Communist and a terrorist.
Notwithstanding the fact that Anders will never be posted to the diplomatic corps, he may at last become better known for something other than his intemperate and inappropriate remarks about Mandela.
That’s because last week, a Court of Queen’s Bench judge in Calgary upheld the complaints of 11 members of the Conservative association in Anders’ riding who asked that the candidate’s nomination be set aside.
Justice Ged Hawco issued a 22-page ruling that stated in part that, “the party did not follow its own rules with respect to setting the date for the nomination or with respect to conducting a fair and effective candidate selection process.”
Anyone who has been around the nomination process for provincial and federal candidates for any length of time knows how prone the whole thing is to mystification, machinations and manipulation.
If there is an Achilles’ heel to the democratic process, it is the nomination, the last (and maybe the first) bastion of the political rapscallion.
It has always amazed me that the election of our ultimate leaders begins with the appointment of a candidate, normally selected by just a handful of party faithful playing by rules of their own devising that almost no one, including them, understands. Talk about your stepping stones on sinking sand.
The whole process is dependent on the indulgence of the party bosses, who allow it to unfold according to the rules if it suits their purposes or pull the invisible strings that change the rules when necessary. Many a candidate who has done faithful service to the party and gone forth to inevitable slaughter at the polls in one election finds himself or herself shocked when the party’s fortunes turn around and the party’s executive is whipped out from under him or her and a shiny, bright new candidate is anointed for the next run now that the party actually has a chance to win.
This scenario has played out many times in Mississauga. Actually, the Liberals are generally worse offenders than the Tories but the stripe of the animal is really irrelevant.
The federal Liberals even have an official, “We know better than you do” policy that allows them to appoint a certain number of candidates across the country, on the premise, one assumes, that democracy at the top should start with autocracy at the bottom.
Fortunately, the days of busing groups of supporters from specific ethnic or religious groups to a nomination (so they have no way to leave when balloting goes on all night) seem to have ended. The massaging has now become a lot more subtle.
To his credit Bob Delaney, a participant in the monster nomination battle for Mississauga West in 1993 eventually won by Carolyn Parrish, actually tried and had some success in fixing his party’s rules.
In the wake of the Anders’ ruling, the squawking has already started that the courts have no business in the political backrooms of the nation.
Maybe not. But if our political parties continuously flout their own regulations, consistently ignore or manipulate the rules they have set for themselves to benefit a chosen member and are clearly unfair to legitimate, if unwanted, challengers, then clearly something must be done.
If parties want to keep the courts out of it, they should set up legitimate avenues of appeal within their own parties, ones not staffed by long-time lackeys and trained kangaroos.