Veteran political consultant and commentator Robin Sears is shocked to learn that selection processes for MPs in Canadian political parties are dodgy things:
[Disgraced former leader Patrick Brown] is also right to say that political parties have demonstrated they cannot be trusted today to run their own nominations processes with rules they themselves set, and ones they clearly sometimes ignore — like paying for someone else’s party membership.
Astonishing it nonetheless is, to have a conservative politician call for state intervention in the private affairs of a political party. Brown said that reflecting on the messy nominations processes he witnessed, he has concluded that, “ … it is time for Elections Ontario to manage this part of our democratic process.” (!)The news that people buy and sell party memberships by the bushel whenever a constituency nomination or a party leadership strikes Sears like a thunderclap, according to his telling of it. It is as if he has never seen this kind of thing before!
On the other hand, he is noticing, and he does acknowledge. It is a start.
