The Conservatives are crowing about their membership numbers in the lead-up to their leadership vote, where some 269,000 Canadians are now eligible to vote – not that they all will, but it’s a shock-and-awe number that they say are bigger than any previous Conservative (or its predecessor parties’) leadership contest – though not quite as large as the Liberal contest that elected Justin Trudeau. And while on paper it’s great that there are so many people who have joined the party, this is one of those traps that have created so many of our problems in this country.

The original sin in Canadian politics was the Liberals’ decision in 1919 to move away from caucus selecting their new leader after Wilfrid Laurier’s death to a delegated convention. From then on, under the guise of being “more democratic,” they ensured that their leaders could henceforth not be held to account by the MPs of their caucus – nor the party, really, because “leadership reviews” are largely bogus exercises (sorry, Thomas Mulcair!). And what ends up happening is that when you have a big number like 260,000 party members, when the leader who winds up being selected in this manner gets into trouble, he or she tells their caucus “I have the democratic legitimacy of these 269,000 votes – the average riding has 75,000 electors. I have the bigger mandate.” It has been the way in which the centralization of power has been justified, and all of abuses of that power have followed.

The other problem is that these kinds of memberships tend to be transactional for the duration of the leadership contest. A good many of these members won’t stick around and to the work of nominations or policy development, which is another reason why these shock-and-awe numbers wind up being hollow in the long run. We do need more people to take out party memberships in this country, but it has to be meaningful engagement, and a leadership contest is not that. It only serves to perpetuate the problems in our system.

Good reads:

• The US border will continue be closed to non-essential travel for another month.
• Former Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson says Trudeau likely broke the section of the code on recusal, and wonders if he has a “blind spot” over ethics matters.
• The RCMP have been asked to follow up on over 21,000 travellers who may not have obeyed quarantine orders.
• The CBC got more details about what WE was asking its partners to do for the student placements as part of the grant programme, and some are questionable.
• The family of a Canadian child stuck in a Syrian detention camp after her ISIS-fighter parents were killed are suing the government to force them to get her returned.
• Mexico’s foreign minister is calling on Canada to extradite a former top police official who may have answers regarding the disappearance of 43 students.
• A number of current and former parliamentarians have signed onto a letter asking the government to impose Magnitsky Act sanctions on Chinese officials.
• The Senate finance committee released their interim report on pandemic spending, and they point to gaps in programmes, as well as call for a Basic Income (of course).
• Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine- Smith says that testimony at committee on grocery stores cutting pandemic pay should get Competition Bureau to investigate.
• Maclean’s profiles Erin O’Toole for the Conservative leadership.
• My column looks at how Trudeau’s penchant for stepping on ethics rakes may be a systemic problem that results from challenge functions being dismantled. 

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