Random Access

Now that there seems to be a hiatus in the Mexican stand-off in provincial politics in southern Mississauga, a little reflection on the convoluted situation might be in order.
Tim Peterson has disengaged himself from the Liberals, is now an independent and will join the Conservative caucus as soon as the current sitting of the Legislature concludes.
He and Tory Leader John Tory (say that three times fast) were expecting the nice former candidates in the riding who have been slugging their guts for the past few months in hopes of beating ... Tim Peterson ... to politely fold their tents and go home.
Brad Butt and Zoran Churchin reluctantly agreed to do so but Effie Triantafilopoulos, a long-time Conservative who has experience as chief of staff in federal Cabinet ministers, executive director of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association and CEO of Save The Children Canada until last Sept., wasn’t quite so quick to genuflect to the (former) enemy.
The independent-minded executive committee of Mississauga South obviously also found it distasteful to be made a pawn in the floor-crossing game that is spreading like a bad bacteria (PC Difficile?) in Canadian politics.
Which leaves Mr. Tory with a few little problems. At the moment, he really can’t force Mr. Peterson down the throats of the local executive.
In a letter to the executive which it summarily ignored, Tory said, “Our party has a proud tradition of allowing sitting Progressive Conservative MPPs to stand uncontested in their riding for our Party’s nomination. This privilege recognizes the broader and important role that our caucus members play in assisting our other ridings and nominated candidates with their election readiness efforts and to build our party’s organization.”
Because the leader and the member decided to have Peterson sit as an independent first, to minimize the floor-crossing fuss, he is not yet a member of the caucus and, at the moment, not entitled to the proud tradition accorded sitting members.
Whether he is entitled after he joins the caucus is another interesting question. The Tory rules apparently just say that a member gets a walkover nomination. Is a guy who got elected for your opponents a Conservative member at all?
Tory can probably force the local executive to call a nomination meeting with his chosen candidate, but he risks alienating even more of the members than he already has. It is already likely that many long-time Tories will sit this one out in the South rather than vote for the guy who beat Margaret Marland.
If Tory should have a sudden fit of conscience and decide to hold a “fair, open and democratic nomination” as the riding executive has requested, he has another, bigger problem. How can Peterson possibly win such a contest?
The other three candidates have sold hundreds of memberships while Peterson has sold none. Triantafilopoulos has reportedly sold between 700-1200 memberships herself.
Even if all new memberships sold were set aside and the process was started over again, how many warm bodies could Peterson possibly sign up given his last-second, election-bed conversion to the Tory cause?
Peterson, of course, agreed to change parties on the assumption he would be ceded the nomination.
So Tory must either ignore the will of the leaders of the Mississauga South riding and risk alienating those who will run the campaign he hopes to win there or break his commitment to Peterson. Not exactly a great choice, but critics ill no doubt say it is a mess he largely created himself.
Does it occur to anyone else that, if we did the logical thing in a so-called democracy, and had a rule which required that every nomination for every party must be open, we would be a lot farther ahead? Parties would not have to protect weak incumbents. Strong ones would have little difficulty keeping their right to run, likely being acclaimed.
The best benefit? You would almost never see people cross the floor if they had no guarantee they would be the candidate for their new party in the next election.