Democracy, As Rob Anders Would Write It

Rob "Sleepy" Anders must be feeling the heat from having competition running against him for the nomination in Calgary Signal Hill.

Yesterday, he threatened to sue Ron Liepert over claims that Liepert's campaign made that Anders' campaign was making misleading phone calls to constituents.

Liepert responded with a statement that says Elections Canada is investigating the incident. 

"We've filed complaints based on specific instances of calls from the Anders' campaign phone number claiming to be the Liepert campaign," he said in an email.

Today, he comes trotting out to claim that the dreaded "Red Tories" are trying to hijack his "True Blue Conservative Party", complete with a bunch of "Wanted, Dead Or Alive" style leaflets naming the people that Anders thinks are "temporary Tories".

At a news conference on Thursday Anders revealed the first three names on his list — former federal Liberal candidate and nursing professor Janice Kinch, radio personality Buzz Bishop and Greg Schmidt, former president of the Energy Council of Canada.  

Anders characterized his battle with Liepert as a struggle for the soul of the Conservative Party. He said the political process is being hijacked by people who are purchasing Conservative memberships just so that they can cast a vote in support of his challenger.

Considering that the CPC has moved heaven and earth to protect Anders in past nomination skirmishes, I imagine he's feeling more than a little heat since the Party is somewhat cornered on the matter this time around, having committed to "open" nomination contests for all MPs who haven't faced a nomination race since 2011.

Citizens of Calgary West: It's Up To You

The Conservative party shenanigans to protect Rob Anders' nomination keep unfolding. In the news this morning, we find the next chapter in the saga:

Walter Wakula said Tuesday that the rules for the nomination are biased against anyone challenging Anders.

Only people who were members of the party last August can vote and challengers can't get a party membership list until after Tuesday's nomination deadline passes.

Wakula said it's like running a 100-metre dash, but Anders is on the 50-metre line while challengers are at the start line with a ball and chain tied to their legs.

"I mean, that is just not a fair race."

For voters in Calgary West, this is important. We live (supposedly) in a democracy, and the CPoC is supposedly a 'grassroots' party where the members are free to speak their minds. The ongoing saga of Anders' nomination merely demonstrates that under current leadership, the CPoC is no longer either grassroots, or even particularly democratic.

When someone cannot contest the nomination for the riding because the MP is magically protected by the PM's whim, and worse, instead of being honest about it, we find the party engaging in all sorts of legal games and rules bending to achieve their goals, one has to begin wondering just what's really at play here.

At this point, it looks like Anders' will be the candidate for the CPoC in Calgary West. Come next election, voters will have to decide if the kind of dishonest, corrupt shenanigans that have gone on in this nomination saga have left Anders with any credibility in terms of his ability to represent them. (Remember, at this point, whoever is protecting his nomination basically owns his ass - if he doesn't bow to their whim, they withdraw their shield - do you know who is protecting Anders so vigorously? ... and would you want someone like that able to puppet-master your MP?

Update: Anders Nomination

Just to give us further insight into how anti-democracy Harper's Tories are, we have the latest update on the squabbles over Rob Anders' nomination in Calgary West.

The Cons are trying to rig the court-ordered nomination by imposing arbitrary rules on who is allowed to vote in the nomination meeting:

An unprecedented move by the party's national council to deny voting rights to new members in Calgary West is curtailing any potential challenges to Anders in a court-ordered second nomination battle.

"The secret, as everyone knows, to winning a nomination is to be able to sell your supporters memberships and get them out to vote," said John Knox, one of 11 disgruntled Tories who have fought the party's unwavering loyalty to Anders from courtroom to courtroom since last August.

The rule - which gives ballots only to those who were party members in the middle of August last year - contrasts with every other Tory riding in Canada, where anyone who has held a membership for more than three weeks can vote at a party nomination.

I can't say that I'm surprised. The HarperCons have done everything they can to subvert and damage the very notion of democracy. Considering the grassroots populist nature of the Reform/Alliance incarnations of this party, it is both disappointing and ironic.

That the Calgary West CPOC constituency association feels it necessary to manipulate and twist the nominations process (with the collaboration of "head office") in a city where a Conservative candidate is practically a shoo-in tells us a great deal about just how dishonest and internally corrupt the Cons really are. (I'm beginning to wonder just what kind of "material" Anders has sitting in a desk drawer somewhere for Harper's crowd to protect his nomination so fiercely...)

H/T: Canadian Cynic

From The Democratic Reform Party...

The intellectual dishonesty of the HarperCon$ continues apace. Consider the following claim of democracy with respect to party nominations:

Plett said 94,000 ballots were mailed nationally to party members in ridings with an incumbent, asking them whether they wanted a nomination race in their constituency. The mail-out included Calgary West, where lawyer Donna Kennedy-Glans wanted to challenge longtime MP Rob Anders.

Two-thirds approval was required to trigger a battle, while an unreturned ballot was counted as a no under new rules adopted by the Conservative party's national council in March. In the past, if people wanted to challenge a nomination, they generally could after an interview, Plett said.

Now, let's think about this. First up is the obvious bar that a 2/3 of membership creates. Anyone even mildly familiar with volunteer organizations knows that for the most part, only a handful of the overall membership is ever active, and likely to return their ballots.

Then there is the ballot counting method. An unreturned ballot is assumed to be a "no"... hmmm... so, in essence, this entire system was set up not so that the incumbents had to actually earn their nomination, but rather so that apathy would guarantee their renomination.

Coming from the party whose roots are in the grassroots populism of the Reform party, this is beyond revolting. They haven't held anything close to a democratic process. Any process which assumes the value of an unreturned ballot to be anything other than "spoiled" is fundamentally wrong.

As a long term watcher of Alberta politics, it's amazing the lengths that the CPoC has gone to in protecting Rob Anders from any kind of nomination threat. Every time there is a credible threat, they go gumby the rules about in such a way as to neutralize the threat to Anders.

But then again, it just tells us something about how conservatives win in politics - by playing on apathy. In Alberta politics, we've seen it for years - where ever dwindling voter turnout has made it possible for the conservatives to gain a virtual stranglehold on the provincial government.

Will They Dispose of Anders?

I've watched Calgary West with the same kind of fascination that a wreck on the Deerfoot evokes.

While the Reform/Alliance party existed, it wasn't too hard to see how Rob Anders managed to get nominated repeatedly. However, when the Alliance party merged with the former Progressive Conservatives, there were suddenly some fairly serious challenges to Anders.

To this point, the Conservative party apparatus has moved to protect Anders whatever way they can, including changing the rules for nominations when Anders was clearly in danger of losing the nomination. How it is that Anders continues to be protected by the party apparatus is beyond me. The man is embarrassment to Canada and Canadians ... and it isn't some magical personality trait that gets him elected in a tough riding - you could nominate a bale of hay as a conservative in Calgary and it would get elected.

However, another move happened yesterday that might signal a sea change in Calgary West. It seems that most of Anders' supporters on the local riding board were swept away in what I presume was the AGM vote to replace the riding executive.

It's a sad statement about Alberta's political scene that this looks like some kind of victory for democracy; an even sadder statement is that Anders has been elected at all.

No, You Can't Change The Rules

It would seem that Rob Anders is no longer the valid nominee for Calgary West. An appeals court judge has ordered that a new nomination be held by June 30:

Justice Connie Hunt said she realizes Anders will be inconvenienced by having to fight another nomination battle in Calgary West, but party members should not be denied their democratic right to choose a candidate.

Gosh, Rob, you would be "inconvenienced" by having to fight another nomination campaign? Too bad. You and your bunch of corrupt cronies broke your own party's rules. Isn't the Conservative Party supposed to be all about grass-roots democracy and all that rot? Or is it just rotten?

In a move akin to lighting a scented candle in a bathroom after a particularly odorific event, we find Stephen Harper appointing Bert Brown to the Senate. Like other moves HarperCreep has made, this is nothing more than making a facade of reforming the senate, and does little in any real sense. (Unsurprising really - like his "Senate Elections" bill last fall, it's long on process and short on recognizing that the Senate is defined and described in the Constitution - and not as malleable as PMSH and crew might imagine. (It's also quite limited in its powers)

Yes, Steve and Rob, you shit and it doesn't smell roses - no matter what your delusional little bubbles may tell you.

If You Ever Thought The CPoC Was Democratic

... you might want to rethink that a bit.

Every time someone has put forth a credible challenge to Rob Anders, the party headquarters has changed the rules quite specifically to protect him.

Now, the party brass has moved in and punted the riding's board:

In a letter to the Calgary West riding association on Thursday, the national council said it would take control of this year's annual general meeting and will have the final word on any riding association spending.

Uh huh. There hasn't been a nomination contest in that riding since 2004, and Anders is notorious as one of the worst MPs ever to hold a seat in Ottawa. (Why Calgary West voters keep electing a nitwit like Anders is beyond me - it's either stupidity, apathy or both allowing him to win)

However, square the actions of CPoC's actions this week with Harper's approach to Parliament in recent weeks. When the outcome Harper wants isn't assured, he tries to change the rules to ensure that it is.

How delightfully democratic.

Assorted Lunacy ... and Why I Won't Be Voting Conservative This Election

Usually, I wait until the election campaigns are in full swing before I make any final decisions on parties/candidates that I'm going to vote for.

What follows is a "six degrees of separation" travel through the terrain of Alberta politics and the intellectual lunacy that calls itself the CPC.

The Alberta Alliance Party just selected a new leader this past weekend - Paul Hinman, their sole elected MLA took the job.

I know nothing about Paul Hinman, so I won't spend too much energy slagging him. What caught my interest was a few other bits from the Calgary Herald article that was in the clippings file from the Alberta Liberals:

David Crutcher was the Calgary hopeful. His supporters wore T-shirts emblazoned with Media, Manpower, Money. "I have an army behind me," Crutcher told the crowd, claiming a network of fundraisers and media contacts unrivalled by anyone else seeking the top job.

Media contacts? Not at the Herald. Not to sound self-important, but I've never heard from the man, nor in fact heard of him until a few weeks back.

Jason Fekete, the Herald's earnest and intense young political reporter, talked to him once.

"Every time you write something, it's a jab," says Craig Chandler, Crutcher's hulking campaign manager. OK, here's something nice about Chandler. He's a gregarious sort. There.

Chandler has some history, handling the nomination campaign for Tory MLA Art Johnston, where he cranked up a little conservative Christian froth to help Johnston beat well-known restaurateur Al Browne. Browne should have won, plugged in to the Tories as he is.
He didn't, partly because Chandler and his types played up that Browne owned a Hooters restaurant. Women's breasts and A-1 chicken wings are evil, and the Bible-thumpers helped Johnston to the legislature.

Hmmm - I've heard the name David Crutcher before...I'm not sure where (yet)...sure enough, after about five minutes with Google, I hit paydirt. Unquestionably, I've heard of Craig Chandler - and I really don't want to hear of him again - but like a bad smell, he keeps reappearing.

Chandler's the man behind quite a few random groups out there now: Concerned Christians Canada; PGIB; and Free To Speak and Freedom Radio Network. Having seen him run Alderman Ric McIver's campaign against Sue Higgins a few years ago, Chandler is a goon. Period.

A brief read through Chandler's bio turns up this little gem:

Mr. Chandler has also debated many political representatives such as former Ontario Attorney General and Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton, MP Stan Keyes, MP Beth Phinney, MP Jason Kenney,

Ah - there's the link I was looking for. We've now (at least partially) linked Jason Kenney (my MP) back to the Christian Reich that has been a seething horror in the bowels of the CPC. Just for giggles, I decided to see if I could find more linking Jason Kenney to Mr. Chandler's efforts.

Sure enough, I start digging and I find plenty that links Jason Kenney to the intolerant side of the Religious Reich:

Donating items to a fundraiser

Of course, LifeSite's reporters like him: Alliance Leadership Race, but I think I've made my point about Lifesite's credibility already.

and he's apparently still quite active in the so-called "Pro Life" lobby in Alberta:

Life 2005 Conference

Granted - I've never liked Jason Kenney in the first place. Not when he first appeared on the scene along with Rob Anders and several other complete nitwits running under the Reform banner. The man's links to organizations that I simply disagree with from stem to stern serve to reinforce my mistrust of the man as an MP. If you believe that the Religious Conservatives are no longer a "major force" in the CPC, I strongly suggest you look again.

And then consider Harper's "mushy" stances on things like abortion - where he's left the door open to having a private member's bill introduced:

June 3 — Stephen Harper says he would allow a free vote on abortion if an MP introduced a private member's bill. "Absolutely ... I would generally continue the practice of allowing free votes on all private member's legislation." He also says he wouldn't rule out using the notwithstanding clause to prohibit gay marriage.

In other words, while Harper will have "plausible deniability" with regards to legislation of "social conservative" topics (e.g. they won't be introduced by cabinet members), you can bet that there would be a lot of legislation being "written by back bench MPs" that just happens to get support from the cabinet MPs.

It's Time To Blow Up The Party System

I have never been a political partisan.  That isn't to say I don't have political beliefs, or positions.  But I simply don't buy into the broad idea of being a member of a political party.  My own politics are fairly complex, and I don't wish to find myself in the position of having to conform with some "party policy" or another on the basis of creating the appearance of unity.  

However, over the last decade or so, I have observed a disturbing change in the nature of our political parties in Canada. They have become businesses - businesses that sell access to power.  Perhaps most disturbingly, they do so on the backs of what is largely a volunteer workforce.  While a small number of people are employed by these parties, the vast majority of the work of fundraising (cash flow) is really done by the active volunteer base.  Meanwhile, the proposition to the voter is "if our party gets into power, we can give you what you want".  

This is true of all parties - everybody is jockeying for a position of influence somewhere.  However, it has also created a more disturbing industry of groups that are attempting to control the parties themselves.  Don't get me wrong, factions in a party are a normal social consequence of putting a group of people together to accomplish a common goal.  I'm talking about organizations like Campaign Life who have spent decades organizing their base in a bid to assert covert control over the Conservative Party. 

But there's more to this whole picture.