Letters to the Editor: Political party nomination meetings are about winning elections
Re: ‘Was the Beaches-East York federal Liberal nomination open or was it a de facto appointment?’, Letters, Beach Metro Community News website, July 20.
I read with interest Mr. Pannu’s letter asking whether the Beaches–East York Liberal nomination was a de facto appointment. The discussion, however, mistakes an internal party process for democratic representation.
This isn’t about the Liberal Party. The same criticism applies to every major political party in Canada.
Political parties exist for one purpose: to win elections. Their nomination processes are therefore designed to select the candidate most likely to advance the party’s interests. That goal may sometimes align with the interests of a neighbourhood, but it is not always the same.
Calling this “democracy” stretches the word beyond its commonly accepted use case.
Yes, party members may vote. But parties determine who is allowed to run, who is allowed to vote, when memberships close, how long campaigns last, what resources candidates have access to, and ultimately retain extraordinary control over the nomination process. These are not public elections. They are private organizational processes.
This is not simply my opinion. The non-partisan Samara Centre for Democracy has described Canada’s nomination system as a “black box.” Its research found that, over a five-election period, political parties directly appointed more than 2,700 candidates without any nomination contest, while more than 70 per cent of nomination races were uncontested or featured only a single candidate. That alone should caution us against romanticizing nomination contests as vibrant expressions of grassroots democracy.
More fundamentally, however, my objection is systemic rather than procedural. Even a perfectly administered nomination does not change the underlying incentive structure.
Before aspiring MPs can represent their communities, they must first persuade a political party that they are the right person to advance the party’s electoral interests. Only then do they ask the public to choose them as the community’s representative. Those are different objectives.
The person most valuable to a party is not necessarily the person who would best serve local residents. Sometimes they are the same. Often they are not. That tension is built into the architecture of party politics itself.
This is not an accusation of corruption. It is simply an acknowledgment of incentives.
Political parties are functioning exactly as they were designed to. They optimize for electoral success. Citizens, meanwhile, understandably assume the process is optimizing for local representation. Those are not the same thing.
Recognizing that distinction is not cynicism; it is simply an honest description of the incentive structure built into Canada’s party system that, rightly or wrongly, is functioning as designed.
Paul Sanghera
