LILLEY: Liberal rules for picking new leader need to be tightened up

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Canada is about to get a new prime minister, but that person will be chosen by rules that wouldn’t be acceptable in a general election. This is unacceptable, and it has to stop, which means every party wanting to contest a general election must be forced to change their rules.

Before we get into the wider issue, let’s consider that the next prime minister will be chosen not by the general electorate but by the Liberal Party of Canada, by their members using their rules.

Justin Trudeau has announced he will resign as Liberal Party leader and PM once his party chooses a new leader. We now know that the Liberals will announce their new leader on March 9, following a short leadership contest.

It’s the rules that are governing this race that should concern every Canadian.

Normally, the prime minister of our country is chosen in a general election by the vast majority of electors, following rules set out by Elections Canada. The last time we had a PM selected by a party was in 1993 when the Progressive Conservative Party chose Kim Campbell, and before that, in 1984, when the Liberals chose John Turner.

Neither of them lasted very long in the job – 132 days for Campbell and 79 for Turner – but that’s not the point. They were elected in a different time before electronic voting, before Canadians knew or cared about foreign interference in our elections.

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In less than 60 days, the Liberal Party will select our next PM using rules that allow non-citizens to vote and children as young as 14. There was a big to-do about the Liberals tightening up their rules to only allow citizens and permanent residents to vote, but that was a distraction.

For context, the Liberal Party previously allowed anyone who was 14 years of age and could say they “ordinarily live in Canada” to vote in nomination or leadership races. The only thing they did was say you have to be a citizen or permanent resident to vote, which still means 14 year-old non-citizens can help pick our next prime minister even though they couldn’t vote in a general election.

“Be a part of the most open movement in Canada,” the Liberal Party’s website says on the page to register to vote for their next leader and our next PM.

There is openness and there is insanity. Allowing 14, 15, or 16 year-olds who aren’t even citizens of Canada to select our next PM makes no sense, but the Liberals take pride in it and claim it is proof of how open they are.

The Liberals will also be using some kind of electronic voting, there is simply not enough time to print paper ballots, mail them out and allow for them to be returned. Any type of voting by phone or internet is rife with the possibility of outside interference — be it by one of the leadership campaigns, an outside party inside Canada or a foreign country.

If China was willing to interfere in Han Dong’s 2019 nomination in Don Valley North, don’t you think that they or Russia or India would want to try and influence the election of the PM of a G7 country?

The NDP and Conservative rules for nomination races and leadership elections are a bit better than the Liberals — but not by much. A few years ago, I would have scoffed at the idea that the government should get involved in the internal matters of a private club, which is what political parties are.

Yet, these parties hold sway and power and as we can see, electing a new Liberal leader means electing the next PM. We need safeguards around that, the best we can muster, which means all parties should need to follow the same rules for voting in nomination races and leadership contests as we follow in general elections.

Anything less is a threat to our democracy.