Ali Khamenei, the religious extremist who has been the supreme leader of Iran for the past 35 years, is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada. So is Xi Jinping, the Communist who has been China’s president since 2013. What!? No Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin?
There’s a better-than-even chance that by the time you read these words, these two foreign despots will have been expunged by the party from the rolls of “registered Liberals.” (The Liberals don’t have “members” — an important distinction I will explain shortly.)
But at the end of the week, social media posters signed up Khamenei and Xi just to prove how ridiculously easy it is. The social media poster who signed up Xi simply entered his name into the online form on the Liberal website, added the address for the Chinese embassy in Ottawa and – click! – the Chinese strongman became eligible to vote in the race to replace Justin Trudeau.
Someone at Liberal party headquarters will almost certainly recognize the scam and disqualify Xi (and Khamenei). Even the Liberals have some scruples. They will happily allow Chinese interference in their local nominating contests, as the commission on foreign interference established in the 2019 and 2021 elections. But let Xi vote for a leader? No way!
The Liberals take pride in billing their party as “the most open movement in Canada.” A fine “woke” concept, but a very problematic one if you are trying to secure a leadership selection vote against tampering by foreign agents and hackers.
The point is, it is remarkably easy to join the Liberal party. Too easy. It’s easy to join the Conservatives and NDP, too, but not nearly as slipshod as joining the Liberals and voting in their nomination and leadership races.
Last year the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) told the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) that nominations and leadership races were the “weakest links” in Canada’s democratic processes; most vulnerable to manipulation by other countries such as China, Russia, Iran and India.
And while the leadership race rules released by the Liberals on Thursday make their current contest marginally less vulnerable, it will still prove very, very difficult to secure.
The Liberals use the American-style term “registered Liberal” rather than the more formal, Canadian word “member.”
That’s because they don’t charge a fee to sign up; not even a nominal $10 or $25 like the other parties.
Basically, anyone who puts their name on the party mailing list is a Liberal.
Party executives have promised to “screen out fraudulent sign-ups,” but how? They don’t require those signing up to upload a passport or driver’s licence for identification. So far, they aren’t even asking for the type of IDs that are allowed during elections, such as student cards and utility bills.
The Conservatives deal with the potential for fake sign-ups by charging a membership fee and then forbidding the use of cash or prepaid credit cards to cover the cost. No one with a wad of bills or a handful of no-name credit cards can enroll hundreds.
Instead, Conservative memberships, particularly during leadership contests, have to be paid for with a personal credit card, personal cheque or money order. While not foolproof, this is a much more secure way to cross-reference personal info with membership sign-ups and flag potential cheaters.
The Liberal process has no such safeguards. If the onus is on the party to spot fraudsters by name only, without any of the standard, technological crosschecks, then what are the chances foreign governments won’t at least try to meddle in picking the next chief Liberal?
This is a problem for a party that has already failed to convince Canadians it takes foreign interference seriously.
Another problem is the short timeline for selecting a leader — less than two months (March 9). And the high buy-in ($350,000). Both favour insiders with established support bases and fundraising machines. However, those candidates are also saddled with a record of supporting the extremely unpopular Justin Trudeau for as long as nine years.
The candidates who are long-standing cabinet ministers could end up like Kamala Harris in last fall’s U.S. presidential race.
She was a bad candidate in her own right (lousy in unscripted interviews and generally phoney), but she was also hobbled by an unpopular leader (Joe Biden), with whom she had been closely aligned and who stepped down late in the game and left her little time to establish her own record. (Sound familiar?)
Former B.C. premier Christy Clark might escape being tarred by the Trudeau brush. Mark Carney might think he can too, but he was a close adviser to Trudeau and has an image as a ditherer on top of that.
I think whoever is selected is already doomed in the next election and that’s a good thing.