The past weekend’s nation-wide vote for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance party was praised by partisans as the greatest moment of direct democracy in Canadian political party history.
They claimed approximately 120,000 Canadians had voted directly for their choice of Official Opposition leader and prime minister-in-waiting.
How democratic can you get?
Well, here’s one answer from the bleachers that undoubtedly could lead to some unpleasant conversations on an Alberta backroad late one night with a CA enthusiast.
You can get much more democratic.
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The CA exercise, like the federal Tories two years ago and Alberta Liberals before that, is an invitation for hidden special interests to take over a political party. In some ways, it allows the public will to be undermined by private agendas.
Alliance members, and Reformers before them, love to rail against special interests – labor and the NDP, the Liberals and their allies.
But opening up a leadership vote to anyone who buys a $10 membership is a golden opportunity for organizers of special causes to exert extraordinary and largely hidden influence.
Say there are 20,000 members of a religious cult or a moral majority group or an immoral minority group or whatever.
They can jump in without having done any of the spade work of creating a political party and have inordinate influence. They can vote because they have been assured the candidate is on side with their cause.
Maybe that didn’t happen with the CA leadership vote, but who knows? Suddenly, the party has 125,000 new members who could determine who will be the prime minister-in-waiting.
Who are they? Why did they join? Is it the fiscal conservatism, which Reform has been preaching for a decade, or is it their private understanding that they are supporting a man who, in power, would enact some part of their agenda?
Former Reform MP and now Canadian Citizens’ Coalition president Stephen Harper says the new party has been captured by the “religious right.” Who knows?
This is not an allegation of sinister plots. It is a criticism of a party that confuses democracy with voting.
There is a reason Canadian governments have shied away from using “democratic” referenda too much to decide complex issues.
Whether it was Mackenzie King’s use of a national vote to relieve him of election promises in the 1940s, or Quebec government attempts to break up the country through confusing questions, referenda are a marvelous tool in the hands of demagogues who invite voters to make public policy on the basis of emotional judgments rather than the balancing act of interests that modern democracies require.
Ontario candidate Tom Long gave the party a lesson in how mass membership, direct votes can be manipulated by organizers with bags of money and few party ties.
The Long campaign’s attempt to sign up Quebecers, dead or alive, was a blight on the reputation of the new party.
More fundamentally, political organizers from all parties should consider the democratic dangers of mass votes and special interests before embracing Canada’s latest political fad.
“I gave the dog a bath, and now everybody wants one!”
