The elephant in the room when it comes to foreign interference is the process by which Canada’s political parties nominate their candidates and yet no major party wants to seriously address it.
It’s not as if they haven’t been warned about the enormity of the problem — repeatedly.
The vulnerability of the nomination process to foreign interference by countries like China and India was cited in the initial report of the foreign interference commission headed by Judge Marie-Josée Hogue in May.
In June, a special report on foreign interference by the all-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians cited the same issue, noting that “CSIS considers the nomination process to be a particularly soft target” for foreign interference.
On Sunday, in an article headlined “A Critical Gap in Democracy? ‘Yawn,’ say Canadian politicians,” The New York Times criticized the lack of interest by Canada’s major political parties in reforming the current system, despite the fact there are credible allegations of foreign interference in both Liberal and Conservative nomination races.
It said despite the fact the current process is the “Wild West” of Canadian democracy, “Canadian political leaders — and some foreign nations — are big fans.”
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Foreign interference in the nomination process was not addressed in legislation passed by Parliament in June creating a foreign lobbyists registry.
The Canadian Press last week reported that Elections Canada has proposed changes to the current wide-open system which, in their absence, reveals what a mess the current nomination process is.
Those proposals include barring non-citizens from participating in nominating meetings and explicitly outlawing such corrupt practices as voting more than once, offering or accepting a bribe to vote for or against a candidate, inducing an unqualified person to vote, or intimidating someone to vote in a certain way.
Elections Canada also recommends banning the purchase of party memberships in bulk or using campaign funds to cover membership fees for those participating in the nomination process. (Membership in the federal Liberal party has been free since 2016.)
For all their rhetoric about wanting to combat foreign interference, the reason the major political parties oppose any changes to the status quo when it comes to nomination meetings is that they want to control the process from start to finish, no matter what.