Mr. Crawley, reporting on recommendations from an ad hoc committee of MPs and party brass, will report to the Liberal caucus on the ground rules for the campaign, including the spending limit and entry fee for the contest, also likely to be a low threshold in light of financial troubles that plagued several candidates following the party’s long leadership contest of 2006, the last time the Liberal rank-and-file had the opportunity to elect a leader.
The Liberal caucus retreat Tuesday through to Thursday at Chateau Montebello conference hotel and resort is book-ended and overshadowed by the drama of the Quebec provincial election on Tuesday and U.S. President Barack Obama’s election campaign-kickoff speech to the Democratic Party nomination convention on Thursday, but hallway talk at the Grit session will be dominated by the Liberals’ gird for Parliamentary battle against Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and his Conservatives when the House resumes sitting on Sept. 17.
“There are two questions: what are you actually doing during the sessions at caucus and what will people be talking about in the hallways? I think we will probably spend a lot of our time planning for the fall [Parliamentary sittings] in our meetings, but I think the topic of leadership might come up in the hallways,” Liberal MP Geoff Regan (Halifax West, N.S.) told The Hill Times, tongue planted firmly in cheek.
The Liberals had their worst showing in political history in the last federal election when they were reduced from 77 MPs to 35 and lost their official opposition status to the NDP.
The small band of 35 Grit MPs and the party’s remaining Senators—now numbering 40 after Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) gradually expanded his party to a Senate majority with often controversial appointments over the past six years—will contemplate their own role in the coming leadership contest following a groundbreaking party decision to open the tent as wide as possible as the Liberals recovered from devastating 2011 election losses.
Convention approval last January of a radical plan to open the leadership vote doors to declared Liberal Party “supporters” in a vote open as well to all party members means individual MPs have likely lost the clout they once had as electoral district associations voted to send a limited number of delegates to leadership conventions.
Next April, in the first week of the month during a scheduled Parliamentary adjournment, the final voting will take place at the same time as an “event” in a major city in Quebec or Ontario featuring the candidates, with at least mail-in balloting and possible online voting as well beforehand. The event will not be a classic leadership convention, but it has not been described publicly by name yet, and Liberals are wary of concurrent online voting after a massive computer hacking attack disrupted the NDP leadership convention last March in Toronto.
Liberal MP John McKay (Scarborough-Guildwood, Ont.) said the new class of supporter voters—who only have to express support for the “purposes” of the Liberal Party and be eligible to vote in Canada—means MP influence will be diminished.
“I don’t think MPs will actually have that much influence on the outcome. There are so few of them, but with this supporters category it’s largely going to fall to the actual candidate himself or herself to get warm bodies. It’s not as if you can be a kind of a power broker anymore and deliver your riding or deliver a group of ridings or whatever, because the delegates don’t matter,” said Mr. McKay.
“He who has the best network wins. I don’t think the MPs are without networks, it will be an interesting dynamic. In theory, somebody from outside caucus could win the whole shebang, and then you’d have another dynamic of how to work with elected members,” said Mr. McKay.
With the inevitable conversation about the significance of the Quebec election outcome and its impact on the NDP and its leader, NDP MP Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, Que.), Liberals say a change in Quebec government could work to their advantage federally.
Whatever happens in that regard could depend also on the outcome of the leadership vote itself, with Liberal MP Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.), whose riding borders Mr. Mulcair’s electoral district, a prospective and widely popular contender.
“I think it’s an interesting moment for the Liberal Party,” said Mr. McKay, a 16-year veteran of the Commons. “Obviously, Tom Mulcair has just ducked the whole (Quebec election) thing, but how long he can continue to duck as the leader of the party with the largest contingent from Quebec is probably one of the stories that nobody’s actually spent a lot of time on, particularly given that some of his MPs are clearly separatist leaning.”
Liberal MP Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, B.C.), in an earlier Hill Timesinterview about Liberal Party efforts to distinguish itself as an alternative to the left-leaning New Democrats, said the leadership will allow the Liberals to set out on their own new course.
“This is not about another party, it’s about our party and I think it’s important that we have a diverse set of people so that we have a diverse set of discussions in this leadership race, because it really is an opportunity for ideas, for principles to be out in the open and to be aired with the Canadian public,” said Ms. Murray, a prospective contender.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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