Roundup: Not what parties are for

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As part of a longer piece (linked in the section below), the campaign director of the Liberal Party offered a loathsome sentence yesterday, and it’s just so completely disheartening.

No. The role of the party is not just to win elections and to fundraise. In fact, this kind of attitude is why the political system in Canada is in the state that it’s in. Parties are just seen as election vehicles rather than the grassroots organizations that deal with ground-up policy development, selection and nomination of candidates, or holding either their local representatives or the party itself to account. There is a whole structure that parties are supposed to play in the political ecosystem of being the interlocutors between ordinary people and the caucuses in the capital – it’s not just about mobilizing volunteers to make phone calls and knock on doors during a campaign. It’s not just about election machinery. It’s about the lifeblood of politics.

But this is where we are – our bastardized leadership selection process, twisted into a parody version of American presidential primaries, has centralized power, and hollowed out parties so that they are no longer performing the functions they were designed to do, and instead are merely vassals to the personality cults that have added brand recognition. It’s utterly debased how the system is supposed to work, and campaign guys like these help to fuel the demise.

Good reads:

  • The Canadian ambassador to the US, David McNaughton, has announced his plans to retire at the end of August (but he’ll still help the Liberals with their campaign).
  • Canada and the US have come to an framework agreement on retooling Norad.
  • A briefing note from senior bureaucrats shows advice to the government in trying to appeal to the majority rather than diversity in order to combat populism.
  • Another briefing note shows of a warning to the government against launching a review of the EI system in an election year.
  • The RMCP have opened a new crime lab to help deal with the bottleneck and backlog of forensic requests.
  • A judge in Saskatchewan has struck down some of the government’s reforms to sexual assault trials because they impact on the ability to conduct a fair trial.
  • The Canadian Chamber of Commerce gave the government a middling grade when it comes to trying to streamline regulations.
  • The Munk Debates have proposed a foreign policy leaders’ debate during the election, and so far only Andrew Scheer has agreed to it.
  • Here’s a look at third-party ad spending that suddenly ceased once the pre-writ period started and they would have needed to register with Elections Canada.
  • Maclean’s has interviews with the campaign directors of the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP, and the Greens.
  • Here’s a longer piece about the NDP’s attempt to rally their fortunes.
  • One of Jody Wilson-Raybould’s former staffers is running for Maxime Bernier in the election.

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One thought on “Roundup: Not what parties are for”

  1. “Parties are just seen as election vehicles rather than the grassroots organizations that deal with ground-up policy development, selection and nomination of candidates, or holding either their local representatives or the party itself to account.”

    Sadly, this is quite right.

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