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TOP STORY
Three former Canadian premiers – at least two of whom have at one point denounced the perils of “American-style politics” – have been announced as the face of a new movement seeking to recruit Canadians for American politics.
The group “Canadians for Kamala” announced Thursday it had been endorsed by former B.C. premier Christy Clark, former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, and former Alberta premier Rachel Notley.
The group is seeking Canadian citizens to assist with the presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Specifically, the Canadians would act as volunteer canvassers in Philadelphia.
“Hear why we’re coming together to rally behind Vice President Kamala Harris and how you can take action as a volunteer,” reads a Canadians for Kamala social media post.
The whole effort has been funded and organized by SEIU Healthcare, a Canadian affiliate of Service Employees International Union, the second-largest trade union in the United States.
The top speaker featured by the Canadians for Kamala website is SEIU President April Verrett, an American based at the union’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
SEIU Healthcare represents 60,000 Ontario health-care workers, and has particularly longstanding ties with the Liberal Party of Ontario, of which Wynne used to be leader.
The union openly backed Wynne during her various re-election bids, in terms of cash, volunteers and paid organizers. And for a brief period in 2017, the president of the Ontario Liberal Party was Michael Spitale, the former director of government relations for SEIU Healthcare.
Even retired Canadian politicians are not typically known to pick sides in U.S. presidential contests. And in this case, some of the premiers are on record at one point as denouncing the importation of U.S. politics into Canada.
In a 2011 interview, Clark denounced the U.S. money being used to fund anti-pipeline causes in Canada. “I don’t think Canadians welcome American-style politics. And so whether it’s American politicians or American interest groups … I don’t think anyone wants to welcome that in British Columbia,” she told Black Press.
In 2017, Wynne and her ministers publicly denounced her Progressive Conservative opponent, Patrick Brown, for bringing U.S.-style politics to Ontario. “Let’s just hope and pray that that’s not the level of political debate that we’re going to have here in Ontario or in Canada,” Wynne said at the time.
Canadians for Kamala is being launched amidst an ongoing scandal about potential foreign interference in Canada’s own elections.
The Foreign Interference Commission remains underway in Ottawa, where it is examining allegations of foreign meddling in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections.
Among the charges being probed by the commission is that diplomats connected to the People’s Republic of China recruited foreign students to sway nomination contests or act as campaign volunteers.
The United States is equally wary of foreign interference in its elections, but Canadians for Kamala does not violate U.S. electoral law.
Foreign donations remain a strict no-no, as per Federal Electoral Commission guidelines. However, it is legal for foreign nationals to provide uncompensated volunteer services to a U.S. presidential campaign.
In 2008, for instance, British musician Sir Elton John organized a fundraiser for then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. It would have been illegal for John to donate his own money to the Clinton campaign, but since he worked for free, the event was above board.
The volunteer services can include what’s known as “phonebanking,” the practice of cold-calling voters to urge them to vote for a particular candidate.
There is nothing in U.S. electoral law to stop Canadians from soliciting U.S. citizens on behalf of a particular candidate. Although, in a CBC story published at the time of the last U.S. presidential election, University of California electoral scholar Rick Hasen said it wasn’t particularly ethical.
“I don’t think you’d want a lot of Americans making calls to tell you whether or not to support Trudeau’s government,” Hasen told the broadcaster.
A version of foreign phonebanking is regularly practiced each election cycle by the group Democrats Abroad, although they limit participation to U.S. expats of voting age.
The sign-up page for Canadians for Kamala makes clear that they’re only looking for volunteers, with potential recruits required to check a box reading “I am interested in volunteering to canvass in a swing state for the Harris-Walz campaign at my own expense.”
As for why Canadians for Kamala has zeroed in on Philadelphia, it’s the largest city in Pennsylvania, a state that polls are showing remains a tight race between Harris and the Republican nominee Donald Trump.
With as few as a few thousand Pennsylvanians set to decide the state for either candidate, it’s been widely forecast that whoever wins Pennsylvania will likely clinch other swing states and thus win the election.
IN OTHER NEWS
A new poll by Nanos shows nearly two thirds of Canadians supporting a slowdown in immigration, with only 31 per cent saying that immigration levels should either go up or stay the same. Among respondents, 64 per cent said Canada should “accept fewer” newcomers in 2025. If public sentiment is suddenly much more immigration-skeptical than usual, it helps that immigration rates are currently at wildly unsustainable highs. Canada is now accepting more than 1 million newcomers per year, a rate that even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged is putting massive strain on housing affordability and the health care system.
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