If vetting federal political candidates was as strict in 2004 as it needs to be today, would Pierre Poilievre have made the cut as a candidate? I wonder.
Since candidate vetting by national political parties is as rigorous as it is in this age of social media, where any injudicious thing we say is likely to live online forever, is the quality of the candidates we’re getting better or worse?
I’m not confident I know the answer to either question, but they’re both worth asking.
I do know that if you’ve ever expressed a controversial opinion on social media or, God help you, in a TikTok video or equivalent, you probably shouldn’t be thinking about running for Parliament. The parties won’t want you, with good reason, even if they happen to quietly agree with you. This is because your opinion is bound to show up in The National Post or some other news organization with a political agenda – which nowadays is just about all of them.
This is especially good advice, by the way, if you’ve already got a job that you won’t necessarily get back if you quit to run for office, as Rod Loyola discovered to his dismay last week after he’d resigned his seat as the NDP MLA for Edmonton-Ellerslie to run for the Liberals in the new Edmonton Gateway federal riding.
That was before Loyola was outed by the Post for having said nice things about Hezbollah and Hamas 16 years ago when he was performing as a rapper at a “Say NO to NATO” rally.
The Post must be losing its touch. They didn’t wait until it was too late for the Liberals to get Loyola’s name off the ballot before they leaked the news, which up until his resignation from the provincial Assembly someone had presumably been keeping in reserve for the next Alberta election.
Thanks to the Post, then, the NDP has probably dodged that bullet, although as the past few days have shown, such revelations from history preserved on social media is a problem that can bedevil any political party.
“I did not think that an intro at a hip-hop segment 16 years later would get me ‘cancelled’ after close to a decade of serving as an elected representative at the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, but here we are,” Loyola told the CBC.
He now says he will run as an independent, but in any federal election, let alone one like this, that is a plan that will end in tears for the candidate, and maybe for a majority of voters too. He’d be wiser just to pack it in and look for a new gig.
As the past few days show, federal parties are skidding candidates with surprising frequency and then bragging about the rigour of their vetting – which is fair enough under the circumstances, as when Poilievre boasted about some of his Conservative Party’s cashiered candidates, even if that was about all he could say in the circumstances.
If I haven’t missed anybody – it’s starting to get hard to keep up – the Conservatives are down four since Monday:
- Mark McKenzie, Con candidate in Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, out for endorsing public hangings. (I admit it’s something of a relief to know Poilievre isn’t touting the view we should Hang the Gang!)
- Stefan Marquis, CPC candidate in Laurier-Sainte-Marie, no reason given, but by the sound of it failing to hew to the national consensus on Ukraine.
- Lourence Singh in New Westminster-Burnaby-Maillardville, no explanation at all for that one.
- Don Patel, the CPC candidate in Etobicoke-North, for endorsing a social media comment suggesting Canadians critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be shipped to India.
Next on the list? Who knows? Maybe Andrew Lawton, the party’s candidate in Elgin-St. Thomas-London South, who Press Progress reported Friday “was a member of a secret group chat used by Freedom Convoy leaders and their lawyers to coordinate messages on social media with right-wing alternative media personalities and far-right social media influencers.”
Apparently it won’t be Aaron Gunn, though, the Conservative candidate for North Island-Powell River on the West Coast. Yesterday, Poilievre drew the line at dumping a candidate for making statements on social media denying that Canada’s historic treatment of Indigenous peoples amounts to genocide despite an open letter from 26 municipal and Indigenous leaders condemning Gunn’s statement.
Meanwhile, the Liberals are down two, including Loyola, both in Alberta.
First to go was Thomas Keeper, the party’s candidate in Calgary Confederation, who the CBC reported had failed to tell the party about a 20-year-old domestic assault charge that was stayed six weeks after it was laid.
So, if I’ve got this right – and the story could be changing as I write this – the Conservatives are beating the Liberals 4 to 2 in fired candidates, even if they’re not ahead in the polls.
It would be tied 4-4 if you counted Edmonton Centre Liberal and former Trudeau Government cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault, and Markham-Unionville MP Paul Chiang, both of whom Prime Minister Mark Carney allowed to walk the plank as candidates without an obvious shove – Boissonnault for his controversial claims about Indigenous ancestry and troubling allegations about his business activities and Chiang for his opinion that an opponent should be turned over to Chinese authorities for the bounty.
The NDP hasn’t lost anyone yet – except maybe Loyola, sort of.
The parties only have until tomorrow to find replacements.
As for the second question – is the quality of the candidates we’re getting better or worse? – the answer is probably better, but not necessarily more interesting or inspiring.
Young careerists found in all political parties will already have figured out that they’d better zip their lips and not share their annoying opinions in their undergraduate political science classes, because someone’s sure to have a phone discreetly recording them for future reference.
But Canada has certainly had excellent Parliamentarians who would never be allowed to run for Parliament today.
Consider Frank Howard, CCF member of the British Columbia Legislature and NDP MP for the old Skeena riding, who served two years in the pen for armed robbery before becoming a union leader and then embarking on a long political career.
As an MP, he played a major role in winning the right for First Nations citizens to vote in Canadian elections. He fought for prison and divorce law reform, earning a reputation “as compassionate and caring,” reporter Jennifer Lang wrote in the Cloverdale Reporter after Howard’s death in 2011.
“I came to this conclusion many years ago,” Lang quoted him saying in a 2004 interview, “don’t blame anybody else for your difficulties. I got to the point where I hated the police. I hated the social workers. I hated foster homes. I suppose I hated myself, too. But I still had to come to the conclusion that it was my doing.”
When someone tried to blackmail MP Howard with a threat to reveal his criminal record, he set up an interview at the local TV station in Terrace and told all on the air. First elected as an MLA by 13 votes in 1953, the northwest B.C. voters came to love him, returning him to office 10 times over 27 years, 17 of them spent as an MP in Ottawa.
Is there anyone like that in Ottawa now? I doubt it. Could there be? Not a chance.
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