Ms. Hall Findlay posted a 700-word criticism on her campaign website, and emailed it to reporters covering the leadership, calling Ms. Murray’s plan an undemocratic scheme that would guarantee the election of NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair as prime minister, should it topple Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and his Conservative government.
Ms. Hall Findlay and Ms. Murray locked horns at a weekend leadership debate in Montreal over the proposal and other issues, while candidate filings with Elections Canada published late Friday show Ms. Murray (Vancouver Quadra, B.C.) had surpassed Ms. Hall Findlay in campaign fundraising from Jan. 1 to mid-March.
Ms. Hall Findlay called Ms. Murray’s plan a “very dangerous idea” for the Liberal Party and said it was “fundamentally undemocratic” to limit people’s choices for election candidates through what she called meetings between party officials “behind closed doors” to agree on the strongest candidates to field in selected ridings.
The plan would allow local Liberal, Green Party, and NDP riding associations in 57 electoral districts where the Conservatives won with less than 50 per cent of the vote in 2011 hold a system of primary votes to select a single candidate from among the three parties for each of the ridings.
“While I have respect for the desire to replace Stephen Harper in 2015, this is a very dangerous idea for the Liberal Party. My objections to her plan, as well as those of the overwhelming number of Liberals I have talked to from literally every part of the country, are numerous, but most importantly, were it to work, the numbers overwhelmingly show that if it were able to replace Stephen Harper, it would be with Thomas Mulcair,” said Ms. Hall Findlay.
Her argument was based on an assumption that all three parties would let incumbents be the “compromise candidate” in their respective ridings, leaving the Liberals a maximum of only 92 ridings if they were to hold on to their current 35 electoral districts, presumably win no Conservative-held ridings and win all of the 57 ridings that took part in the cooperation strategy.
Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s, Ont.) told The Hill Times that Ms. Hall Findlay’s comments could work against the party once a leader is chosen and the Conservative Party begins planning attack ads against the new leader in advance of the next election.
“I think that everything we do is to actually show unity, you can I think declare your own position without ridiculing someone else’s and put forward what you would do and how you would form the next government, I think is really important,” Ms. Bennett said.
“I think sometimes, as we saw in 2006 [after Liberal MP Stéphane Dion (St. Laurent-Cartierville, Que.) was elected Liberal leader], we, as Liberals, have to understand that providing the attack ads for other parties is probably not the best approach,” Ms. Bennett said.
Ms. Hall Findlay, while demonstrating a core of support at the Montreal debate and in earlier fundraising, has angered members of the Liberal caucus with policy proposals that go against the party grain in some areas.
Ms. Hall Findlay accused the Liberal Party of ignoring Saskatchewan as it was scheduling debates during the leadership campaign, and also has called for an end to supply management in Canada’s dairy and poultry industries—a longstanding Liberal position over the years.
Liberal MP Judy Sgro (York West, Ont.), who voted for Ms. Hall Findlay on the first ballot of the party’s 2006 leadership convention, defended Ms. Murray’s position, even though she does not support it, and said Ms. Murray had been advocating the same issue well before she entered the leadership.
“Joyce has very strong feelings on this issue, she’s done very well with it, will anything come of it? It’s going to be up to the members of the party to decide in January, any kind of discussion about mergers or anything else,” Ms. Sgro said.
Ms. Sgro said there is no guarantee other parties, even the Green Party, would cooperate.
“Martha has taken a couple of positions that are clearly opposite to what the general caucus [supports], supply management being one of them, and I think she’s been very busy promoting herself, and I don’t think she’s been very good at promoting the party and party unity, frankly,” Ms. Sgro said.
“The fact that there’s words, you know it’s a leadership, people are trying to be different than the others. You would expect there to be some words, they’ve all got along really well until now,” Ms. Sgro said.
One Liberal MP said relations between Ms. Murray and Ms. Hall Findlay have not gone well recently, and Liberal MP Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre, B.C.) said leadership candidate scraps will come back to haunt the party.
“I just think it’s ridiculous when leadership candidates fight amongst themselves, because it comes back to haunt them later on when a leader is picked and that leader, and those words are used to turn against the leader. It’s emotional and they should stop and think, that’s all,” Ms. Fry said.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: Tim Naumetz
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