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Over the weekend, the Ontario Liberals held a convention to determine the rules for their forthcoming leadership race.  Two successive votes were held in order to change the rules from a delegated convention to a one-member-one-vote system, and both failed, the latter vote getting 57 percent approval but shy of the 66 percent threshold needed to change the rules.  While this does mean that they have dodged a bullet in terms of not adopting a system that is the most corrosive to our system of politics, it's clear from the rhetoric being deployed by MPPs and party luminaries that they haven't learned their lesson, and that they are keen to keep heading on a self-destructive path.  Worse, the fact that there are those in the party who are trying to draft "star candidates" like astronaut Chris Hadfield shows that nobody in the party has learned a single lesson about what is wrong with politics these days.

Judging from the reporting from the convention, it appears that the recent Progressive Conservative leadership contests in Ontario that resulted in the wins by both Patrick Brown and Doug Ford were enough to spook some of the Liberal delegates into not backing OMOV, which shows that at least some of the party membership has thought twice about the allure of OMOV.  After all, as OMOV systems allow, Brown was able to mobilize "supporters" across the province that had no particular loyalty to the party or its machinery that Christine Elliott was not able to, and essentially rented a voter base to win him the leadership.  Likewise, the particular rules of the PCs' weighted OMOV system allowed Doug Ford to win the leadership in his contest without winning the popular vote because of how the weighting worked (not to mention the other problems with ballots that Elliott, also the challenger in that contest, was prepared to challenge in court before she backed down).

Both Brown and Ford were outsiders to the party, and neither had a seat when they were made leader Brown still holding his federal seat at the time.  That Brown and Ford were essentially interlopers to the party could seem like both a feature and a bug of the system feature in that people convince themselves that this allows for fresh blood and a fresh vision for the party to rally around, and bug in that it can completely undermine the party's established policy direction as voted on by its membership.  Because OMOV encourages leadership cults, it insidiously hollows out the party so that the leader becomes the party, and MPs/MPPs are expected to rally around them because they supposedly won the "democratic legitimacy" of the membership and if MPs/MPPs dare to question the leader or the process, they are derided as "elites" trying to usurp the place of the "grassroots" membership.

But the problem is that it's not really a grassroots system.  OMOV masquerades as such, but is really more an exercise in astroturfing the term applied when highly organized campaigns use the trappings of grassroots democracy to manipulate the process.  That's why their leadership membership base is so ephemeral because they are essentially rented by the campaign to get their leader elected, but these are not people who stick around afterward.  They disappear into the aether, while the actual grassroots party members, who volunteer and spend their time doing the hard work of debating policy resolutions, and performing the necessary accountability function at the ground level, are essentially hung out to dry.  The policy work they spent their time on has become meaningless because now leadership candidates are expected to come in with policy platforms as part of the process, the actual grassroots be damned.

And then come the excuses, with proponents citing that it's more "modern," or more "democratic," or that it somehow gives everyone an "equal voice at the table."  These are all false, and more to the point, what they do is remove accountability from the system.  Leadership reviews are not accountability because they can be gamed in the same way as OMOV leadership contests (look at the experiences of Greg Selinger in Manitoba, or Jeremy Corbyn in the UK), and an ephemeral and nebulous membership body that elected a leader cannot be expected to hold him or her to account after all, when you're accountable to everyone, you're accountable to no one.

The other problem we now face in trying to dissuade parties from this terrible system is the allure of the database signing up as many names as possible to participate in these sham "democratic" processes is the real desired outcome, because parties believe that these databases are what wins them elections.  It was the goal of the federal Liberals when they did away with their membership fees and allowed for "supporters" to vote for their leadership aside from exacerbating the problems of OMOV, it was all about populating their voter identification database, because they were years behind the Conservatives in that regard.  For a party in rebuilding mode like the Ontario Liberals, this is a siren song that it seems only a just enough members were able to shake off before it lured the party onto the rocks.

We as Canadians need to come to grips with the fact that our leadership systems are broken beyond repair, and OMOV is not going to solve the problems in our system, because it is the problem.  And no, the Ontario Liberals' status-quo of a delegated convention is not much better it still keeps the accountability away from the leader, and it still creates leadership cults.  As much as people don't want to hear it, the first step in fixing what's wrong with our politics is to return to having the caucus choose the leader.  It's not to find a celebrity or messiah for people to flock to it's about restoring accountability, and returning the power to MPs/MPPs and to grassroots members.  That won't happen under OMOV.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Canada, while imperfect, has worked hard to be open, tolerant and understanding in its beliefs and policies. The PM's words don't reflect that

The outcome of the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls was going to be difficult for the Indigenous Canadian community and Canadians in general.  That much was always clear.

What happened last week, however, changed the parameters of this discussion and led us down a rabbit hole we should have never entered.

The inquiry said Canada is carrying out a "genocide" against Indigenous peoples.  Not in the past, mind you, but in the present.

The Organization of American States was stunned by this news. As Secretary-General Luis Almagro wrote in a June 3 letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, "the mere presumption of the crime of genocide against Indigenous women and girls in your country should not and cannot leave any room for indifference from the perspective of the Inter-American community and the international community."

Almagro also wanted to include "an Inter-American mechanism to this investigation."  Recognizing that Canada "has always sided with scrutiny and international investigation in situations where human rights are violated in different countries," he continued, "I am expecting to receive a favourable response to this request."

The whole situation was quickly getting out of hand.  It could have easily been defused if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had intervened in a diplomatic manner with strongly worded language and a helping hand.

Alas, Trudeau took a very different tact.  He said during a press conference at last week's Women Deliver summit in Vancouver, "We accept the finding that this was genocide and we will move forward to end this ongoing national tragedy."

The sound of jaws dropping was deafening.  While the historical treatment of Indigenous peoples experienced in Canada was awful, it wasn't genocide.

Merriam-Webster defines genocide as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group."  There have been instances of genocidal annihilation around the world, including the Nazi Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in the Soviet Union, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, civil wars in Rwanda and Somalia, and the bloodthirsty savagery of the Islamic State.

Canada's Indigenous peoples have never experienced anything of the sort.

Certainly, they've been mistreated and isolated throughout history.  They've experienced racism on a province-to-province basis.  Native Canadian leaders have struggled to work productively with the federal government, no matter the political stripe, due to generations of mistrust.  Historical concepts like residential schools were well meaning (in some communities) at the start, but ultimately failed in practice due to neglect, abuse and hatred.

But Canada has never engaged in the "deliberate and systematic destruction" of Indigenous peoples, either in the past or the present.  One individual or group's perception isn't an entire country's reality.  As well, the dislike and/or hatred of a select few doesn't represent the diverse views of the many.

Irwin Cotler, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister, human rights lawyer and head of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, may have said it best when he told CBC News, "If we say everything is a genocide, then nothing is a genocide."

This is exactly the trap Trudeau fell into.

All the PM had to do was politely critique the inquiry's assessment.  Acknowledge its suggestion of genocide as an opinion open to interpretation, but stress that Canada, while imperfect, has worked hard to be open, tolerant and understanding in its beliefs and policies.  He could have announced a process to assess the information, speak with native leaders and report back.

He did no such thing, however.  In his ongoing quest to curry favour with Indigenous peoples and enhance his credentials as an apologist for our country, he reacted to the controversy by calling something that clearly wasn't genocide exactly that, genocide.

Putting the genie back in the bottle will be impossible.  Generations of Canadian prime ministers will now have to deal with the ramifications of Trudeau's irresponsible and historically inaccurate response.

Words matter, prime minster.  Take another sip from your "uh, paper, um, like drink box water bottles sort of things" that you and your family apparently use, and think about it.

Photo Credit: CTV News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.