Roundup: Leadership rules released

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The Liberal Party National Council met last night, and around 10:30 PM released the rules of the forthcoming leadership contest. The voting ends March 2nd, with the announcement made on March 9th. There will be a $350,000 entry fee (high enough to discourage no-hope candidates), and candidates must declare by January 23rd. People registering to vote in the contest have until January 27th to sign up (remember, the Liberals don’t have memberships you need to buy), and they have tightened those rules to only include citizens and permanent residents, following all of the talk at the Foreign Interference Inquiry.

The Liberal leadership rules are out.High entry fee to discourage no-hope candidates, and they have tightened who can be a "supporter" to just be citizens or permanent residents. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-10T03:35:50.365Z

There are already complaints over social media that the entry fee is too high, meaning the field will be narrow, but that’s kind of the point—this is a race to be prime minister, not leader of the third party like it was the last time around, so you only want serious people, not those looking to build a profile (as far, far too many people do in leadership races). Yes, it’s a barrier to entry, but again, this needs to be a race for serious candidates only. As for the changes to who can register, there were a number of people on social media talking about how they registered their cats to vote, and things like that, because they thought they were being terribly clever in proving a point about how easy the system is to game. The Party spokesperson tweeted out that those fraudulent “memberships” (which they’re not really) will be removed, because again, the point of this exercise is really to collect data to populate a voter identification database, and it’s not too difficult to tell that your pets don’t have voter identification to match to in the system.

Speaking of unserious entrants, backbencher Chandra Arya announced he was running yesterday, and included a list of ridiculous plans including ending Canada’s monarchy, which is not only disqualifyingly dumb, but would mean getting unanimous consent of the provinces to essentially rewrite the constitution to do so. He also speaks no French and dismissed its importance (and good luck with that too). Christy Clark is apparently due to announce her bid shortly, but I did notice that Chantal Hébert was calling her out over social media for refusing to do an interview in French (to say nothing about actually knowing which party she belongs to, as she apparently took out a Conservative membership to vote for Jean Charest in their last leadership race after musing about her own bid for that leadership).

All of it. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-09T15:23:22.169Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Two people were killed in Russian shelling of the town of Siversk in the Donetsk region. Ukraine’s air force says that Russia has launched over 51,000 guided aerial bombs on Ukraine since the start of the invasion. And that oil depot that Ukraine hit near a strategic Russian airfield has continued to burn for more than 24 hours.

Good reads:

  • Following Jimmy Carter’s funeral, Justin Trudeau went on CNN to say that Trump’s annexation threats are a distraction from the impact of his tariff threat.
  • Harjit Sajjan says that Canadian firefighters and military, and aircraft are standing by to deploy to California to help fight the wildfires there.
  • Patty Hajdu is warning about how disappointing it will be if the First Nations clean water bill doesn’t pass Parliament before the election.
  • Canada formally recognized the opposition leader in Venezuela as the legitimate president following the stolen election last year.
  • Minister Gudie Hutchings says she won’t run again, and Yvonne Jones is set to announce the same, leaving only one Newfoundland and Labrador incumbent.
  • Pierre Poilievre held his first media availability since Trudeau’s announcement, and he still insists it will be an election about the carbon levy (as opposed to Trump).
  • The BC Conservatives are looking to challenge some election results, months later, after “new evidence” that sounds suspiciously like American conspiracy theories.
  • Stephen Marche explains some of Trump’s current bullying as masking for certain other weaknesses, which Canada needs to be strong against as chaos looms.
  • Emmett Macfarlane points to how the way parties choose leaders is broken and that affects our political system (which is a drum I’ve been banging on for years).
  • Philippe Lagassé explains just what the caretaker convention actually is, and why the current situation is not it (but would be once an election is called).
  • Althia Raj assesses the early state of the Liberal leadership contest.
  • My Xtra column looks at how Trudeau’s pending resignation has changed the dynamics of the election year facing us.

Odds and ends:

On national security grounds, we should ban Tesla, Starlink and everything else associated with Musk from Canada.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2025-01-09T19:44:27.431Z

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One thought on “Roundup: Leadership rules released”

  1. Canada formally recognized the opposition leader in Venezuela as the legitimate president following the stolen election last year.

    I am sure President Edmundo González will be a worthy successor to President Juan Guaidó.

    Why does Canada engage in these stupid games?

    Reply ↓

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