Party brass and MPs involved in backroom planning for the race, with a leadership vote to be held on an as-yet undisclosed date next April, are also expected to set a leadership campaign expense limit well below the $3.4-million ceiling for the last federal Liberal leadership race, held in 2006 prior to severe limits on political contributions took effect under the freshly minted Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.).
One of Mr. Harper’s new 2006 rules—on top of limiting contributions to $1,000 from the previous $5,000 ceiling—allowed donors only one contribution ever to a specific federal party leadership race and contributed to a desperately scarce funding environment that left several of the Liberal candidates tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for years.
“They changed the rules in the middle of the campaign,” Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac Saint Louis, Que.) told The Hill Times as he revealed that the long-anticipated leadership race will likely dominate discussions behind closed doors at the Liberal caucus meeting scheduled to be held at the Montebello resort near Ottawa on Sept. 4 and 5.
“Obviously, leadership will be on the agenda, more from the point of view of the leadership rules. The party at the moment is discussing leadership rules,” said Mr. Scarpaleggia, a member of a national party committee hammering out the financial aspects of the campaign.
Mr. Scarpaleggia said the 2006 limits to political contributions were the main reason behind the difficulty several Liberal candidates subsequently had paying off their loans—up to $400,000 for former MP Ken Dryden. Other candidates who were still in debt as of reports they filed last Dec. 31 included B.C. MP Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre, B.C.), former MP Joe Volpe and former MP Martha Hall-Findlay, who is also considering a leadership run again.
“That’s one of the issues around the debt loads,” Mr. Scarpaleggia said. “Candidates started their campaign under a specific set of rules, and then those were changed midway, so I guess some thought they could raise more, because the limits were higher, including from themselves.”
Mr. Scarpaleggia cited candidate debt ceilings as another area being considered by the party committee prior to the caucus retreat in Montebello, as well as stringent campaign donation and expense reporting on a regular basis, on top of donation report requirements to Elections Canada through the race.
“You could have similar, or slightly different, even more stringent mechanisms at the party level. Everybody has to abide by the Elections Canada rules, but it doesn’t prevent the party from having something that’s a little more frequent, or stringent,” Mr. Scarpaleggia said.
Liberal MP John McCallum (Markham-Unionville, Ont.) who has experienced caucus affairs through two leadership periods since his first election in 2000, said the coming contest will inevitably affect the House tempo of the Liberal caucus, holding as it does only 35 of the 308 Commons seats following its historic setback in the 2011 federal election.
“I think that always happens in a leadership [contest], because the candidates, for example, will probably not have critic roles anymore and so that depletes our group in Parliament. We saw that during the NDP leadership contest,” Mr. McCallum told The Hill Times.
“Even MPs who are not candidates but might be strong supporters of individuals might find their attention wandering from the Parliamentary debates to the leadership. I think we’re going to have to pull together, work together, within the caucus. It is challenging, the nature of the beast, to keep your eye on the Parliamentary ball when the leadership race is going on.”
Liberal commentator Rob Silver agreed, but said interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) being at the helm means the Liberals will likely not lose as much ground in Parliament as the NDP during its leadership race over last winter, with the inexperienced rookie MP Nycole Turmel (Hull-Aylmer, Que.) experiencing difficulty as she took on Mr. Harper and managed her MPs.
“The good thing about having Mr. Rae as our interim leader guaranteed through the leadership is that as a party it’s unlikely we’re going to have the same challenges that the NDP had during their leadership race,” Mr. Silver told The Hill Times. “Given how strong a performer Bob is, that will be a strength of the party while some of the caucus members are off doing leadership stuff he can keep the party active in the public eye in the House.”
Liberal House Leader Marc Garneau (Westmount-Ville Marie, Que.), who is weighing his own leadership candidacy, told The Hill Times the 35 Liberal MPs and 40 Senators will also devote time to discussing strategy for the fall sittings of Parliament scheduled to resume on Sept. 17.
“Obviously there will be kind of an overview of what we might expect in terms of legislation,” said Mr. Garneau, hinting he expects the government may set the stage for the kind of confrontations that took place in the first year of this Parliament, such as the marathon overnight voting as the opposition parties attempted to delay the government’s 400-page omnibus budget implementation legislation, Bill C-38.
“Certainly one of the prominent things, if you can harken back to June and remember that very, very big bill, C-38, that led to so much voting, well, there’s going to be a part two, we assume, because Mr. Flaherty certainly has not put everything into C-38 that was hinted in his budget, and he has more or less said that there will be a part two,” Mr. Garneau said.
“We expect that to come forward, and it will be interesting to see whether the government takes a different approach this time, or whether they will still take that approach that ‘we can stick as many different things as we want into this thing and the opposition will just have to put up with it and if we have to vote over a long period of time we’ll still pass it.’”
Mr. Garneau said in the interest of democracy, the government should moderate its position on omnibus bills.
Mr. Silver was not optimistic the Conservatives would change their tune on omnibus bills.
“I’m not sure that a leopard, after seven years of running, just suddenly changes his spots. I don’t think the Harper governments approach to the fall sittings is going to be any different from previous ones, especially since they got their majority,” he said. “Obviously, the Quebec election results may change both the tone and content of what takes place if there’s a PQ victory, but we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out, but no, I would entirely expect more of the same from them.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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