Rob Anders: I Get By With a Little Help From the Dead

The Hill Times has the latest on the Cons' efforts to protect Rob Anders in Calgary West, including one tidbit about the party's farcical "vote" on nomination races which I hadn't yet heard:

The council last year deflected an earlier attempt by members of the association to schedule a nomination meeting, using a controversial poll of all the party's incumbent ridings. The poll, billed as a new element of the party's policy of shielding Conservative MPs from nomination challenges, asked members to mark mail-out ballots and return them if they wanted a riding nomination.

Members were told that unreturned ballots would be considered votes against nomination meetings and no riding, including Calgary West, met the required threshold of two-thirds support.

The Calgary West rebels say ballots that were sent to a handful of deceased former members and went unreturned were included in the count, a point acknowledged by Anders' supporters.

Now, there were plenty of obvious problems with the Cons' review process from the beginning. But it seems to take matters to a whole new level if the Cons are acknowledging that their count to prop up Anders includes the "votes" of deceased former members - signalling that rather than Anders' Zombies merely being names on a list (as is normally the case in similar disputes), their imputed votes were actually used to defeat those of the living.

Needless to say, that practice should serve to permanently shut down any claim the Cons might make to caring about clean elections either internally or externally. And one has to wonder whether the split within the Cons will only be amplified once members who once stood for democratic principles under the Reform banner realize that their voice within the Cons can be drowned out by the dead.

On wrongful control

The Cons are apparently offering up a helpful example of the distorted balance of power between top-down parties and riding associations. But it's worth noting just how it is that they're seeking to protect Rob Anders from a riding association which wants him gone:

The tumultuous history of the federal Conservative riding association in Calgary West continued this week with the Tory party's national council apparently assuming control of the association 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.

"They haven't gone as far as disbanding the board," Anders said.

So what's noteworthy about that decision to effectively take over the finances of the Calgary West riding association? Let's take a quick look at a few key terms of the Canada Elections Act as to who's responsible for the finances of an electoral district association:

403.02 (1) An application for registration of an electoral district association of a registered party may be submitted to the Chief Electoral Officer by the association, and must include
...
(d) the names and addresses of the chief executive officer and other officers of the association;

(e) the name and address of the appointed auditor of the association; and

(f) the name and address of the financial agent of the association.
...
403.16 (1) Within 30 days after a change in the information referred to in subsection 403.02(1) other than paragraph 403.02(1)(b), a registered association shall report the change in writing to the Chief Electoral Officer. The report must be certified by the chief executive officer of the association.
...
403.27 The financial agent of a registered association is responsible for administering its financial transactions and for reporting on them, in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

403.28 (1) No person or entity, other than an electoral district agent of a registered association, shall pay the registered association’s expenses.

(2) No person or entity, other than an electoral district agent of a registered association, shall incur the registered association’s expenses.

(3) No person, other than an electoral district agent of a registered association shall accept contributions to the registered association.

(4) No person, other than the financial agent of a registered association, shall accept or make transfers of goods or funds on behalf of the association.

Of course, a national party ultimately holds the power of deregistration to try to keep its riding associations in line. And presumably there wouldn't be any perceived problem with a national party providing administrative assistance which a riding association actually wants.

But the Canada Elections Act couldn't be much more clear in specifying that it's the riding association that has the authority to appoint its financial agent(s), and those agents that hold sole authority and responsibility to make financial decisions on behalf of the riding association. Which means that to the extent the Cons are declaring an intention to control the finances of their Calgary West association regardless of what its officials have to say, they're declaring that as far as they're concerned, internal party control trumps the law of the land.

That would be a striking enough statement on its own. But it's doubly so based on the fact that the Cons' recent victory in securing reimbursement for some of their Conadscam expenditures was based in no small part on the court finding that candidates' agents (who occupy a similar position to electoral district associations' agents during an election campaign) actually did retain control over decisions on how their finances would be managed:

The evidence on record conclusively establishes that the RMB program was a completely voluntary endeavour undertaken by individual campaigns. This is evidenced by the fact that the candidate in the Cardigan-Malpèque riding did not participate despite his initial commitment.
...
(I)t was perfectly lawful for the Party to put a condition on the use of any sum of money that would be transferred to a local campaign. It was up to the campaign to accept or refuse such condition, just as it was up to the campaign to accept to participate in a regional media buy organized by the Party.

Of course it's true that the candidates and agents involved in Conadscam were under plenty of pressure to go along with the party's scheme, just as the Calgary West riding association is presumably being told to "consent" to central party control or face deregistration. But the Cons' direct statement that they plan to take the "final say" in any and all expenditures by the association seems to go significantly further than they've gone before in imposing direct party control on what's supposed to be an independent entity.

Which means that in addition to the slight against riding-level democracy implicit in the Cons decreeing that they'll be taking control of the Calgary West association's operations, the Cons have given Elections Canada every reason to keep a very close eye on what happens in the riding from here on in. And the actual members on the ground will themselves have every reason to wonder just what it is that the Cons plan to do with the association's financial reserves when they obviously don't trust it to act for itself.

A dictatorship would be so much easier

Shorter Con argument in trying (unsuccessfully) to win a stay of the judgment requiring a new nomination process for Rob Anders' riding:
If you force us to follow our rules in Calgary West, they'll expect us to do the same everywhere!