Former members of Parliament interviewed by Samara for
its 2014 study,
“Tragedy in the Commons,”
reported an overwhelming sense of bewilderment about the nomination process, a feeling of being
manipulated by unseen forces. MPs, the study’s authors write, “spent a great deal of time describing how
painful and mystifying they found this particular aspect of their entry into politics.”
They “struggled to articulate how nominations functioned, citing a lack of clarity in time lines, sources of decision making and the application of the rules. Procedures varied widely from riding to riding, and the process appeared subject to a host of idiosyncrasies, giving
the impression that the party’s, rather than the people’s, favoured candidate was selected.”
And this was how the winners assessed it! (“We cringe to imagine what those who were less successful might say.”) But then,
this was merely their introduction to the brutalization they were to experience later, as elected MPs – their first taste, as the Samara authors write, of “the bullying and controlling behaviour of their parties.”
That’s partly a consequence of how they were nominated: Not only are MPs often the hand-picked choice of the leader, but
no candidate, incumbent or otherwise,
can run without the leader’s signature on his nomination papers.
They are at the leader’s mercy, utterly dependent on his or her favour not only for any chance of advancement, but even to hold on to what they have.
And yet the same does not apply in reverse.
While members of caucus are, effectively, chosen by the leader, they have little or
no say in how the leader is chosen. Canadian party leaders, federal and provincial, are elected, not by the caucus they will lead, but by a vote of the members
