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| Aisha Jahangir |
Even more crucially, there are some pretty deep skill sets necessary to run a good campaign. Most people would cringe at the complexity involved in reporting every dollar raised and spent to keep on the good side of the Elections Finances Act. Keeping track of individual voter intentions also require how to manage a database. Running a social media campaign needs someone who can navigate the delicate balance between forcefully defending their candidate while at the same time avoiding entanglement with the libel laws. Volunteer managers also have to learn how to motivate people to do the boring and tedious work that underlies any big enterprise, and, keep everything under control while having a deft enough touch to not discourage people' initiative and creativity.
It's really important to understand how much work goes into running for office. This is especially important as there really aren't any guarantees about whether or not someone is going to win. People often complain bitterly about the fact that parliamentary pensions only require 6 years service as an MP. But the fact is that getting elected to Parliament is often the culmination of years and years of unpaid service to the political party---including running in ridings where he or she has no real hope of getting elected. Even if a "star candidate" gets "parachuted" into a safe one, this generally means that they are either interrupting a lucrative career because they think that they have something special to offer to Parliament, or, that they have devoted years to some sort of public service, which would usually be either volunteer or poorly paid. Unless there was some sort of financial "offset" like a good pension plan, it would probably be impossible to attract any star candidates---except the independently wealthy---to run for office.
This should be obvious, but I had to ask the question because of some of the things I've heard about politicians over the years. You can't run for office with any hope of winning without campaigning full time, but most people simply cannot afford to take all that time off work. The solution is that they get paid by their party to make up the difference. If this didn't happen, no one but independently wealthy people would be willing to run for office.
It's also important to emphasize that the money that Ms. Jahangir talks about mostly comes from tax payers. That's because of our election financing system. When someone makes a donation to the party of their choice, they receive a receipt that allows them to get a credit back from their income taxes. It comes to:
- 75% of the first $400
- 50% of between $400 and $750
- 33.3% between $750 and $1,275
In addition, there is also a subsidy for the Electoral District Association based on the percentage of the popular vote their candidate received in the previous election. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia
---political parties and candidates are reimbursed for some of their election expenses. ( See Political Campaigning in Canada.) Political parties that received either two per cent of the national vote or five per cent of the vote in the districts in which they ran candidates get back 50 per cent of the money they spent. Candidates who received at least 10 per cent of the vote receive 15 per cent of the election expenses limit in their district. If the candidate spent at least 30 per cent of the limit during the election, the reimbursement increases to 60 per cent of what the candidate spent.
The most recent calculation of the candidate's spending limit for a federal election in Guelph that I could find was $130,000. According to the Elections Canada report on line, the local NDP spent $32,293 in both financial expenditures and in donated goods and services in the 2019 election. Since Aisha got 12.3% of the vote---over the 10% threshold---this means that the local NDP got a payment from Elections Canada of $19,376 to partially make up what was spent on her campaign.
The key principle of our election financing system is that parties get reimbursed based on the amount of popular support. When you make a donation, you get a significant fraction of the money back during tax time. And, if it gets a relatively small percentage of the popular vote, the Electoral District Association receives at least half of the money it spent. Again, this means that you don't have to be rich to be involved in politics---you just have to have the backing of a significant fraction of the voters. This is entirely the right way to do things, and if you want to see what happens when rich people have far too much influence in politics you only need look South of the border.
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The way you get the support that I mentioned above is by being visible and building a rapport with lots of people over a long period of time, which is what Jahangir is doing with all that face-to-face time with Guelph's citizens. It also comes from the brand that the NDP has built up over several lifetimes.
If memory serves, I can remember years ago reading about Prime Minister Jean Chretien being present at the funeral of janitor in Toronto. Why would he be there? As the news story told, this fellow had organized very large barbecues for the Liberal Party for many years. Chretien realized that this sort of activity is the absolute "life blood" of politics, and he could never have made it as Prime Minister without thousands of local Liberal party members doing things like this to support the organization. Of course, he couldn't go to every single supporter's funeral---but he could make it to the odd one. And by doing so, he was letting everyone know who the important people in politics really are.
Aisha's mention of Dustin Brown raises an important point. Political parties are built of personal relationships between individuals. The ideology brings people together, but that's not really enough to sustain a group effort over the long haul. What really does is friendship between folks who learn more about each other. It's a great way to make friends. And, it's also a good way to learn about how people from other cultures, classes, races, etc, see the world.
I often hear complaints about patronage appointments, where parties will put loyal members on boards and commissions governing things like crown corporations and regulatory agencies. Things can and often do go wrong with this process, but I think it's important to see it in the context of how personal relationships are the glue that holds a political party together. Moreover, I would argue that patronage is also important to ensure that government policy actually gets implemented. It is possible for a small group or individual in the bureaucracy to sabotage a policy if the people responsible for its implementation don't share the same goals as the party that designed it. And if a party can't get its policies implemented after they have passed, there's really not much value in passing good legislation in the first place. Putting a loyal party member into the top oversight position helps ensure that this sabotage doesn't take place.
It's important to remember that when Ms. Jahangir refers to "eight people on her core team" that she's referring to management. She had a great deal more volunteers than that working on jobs like fundraising, putting up signs, calling people on the phone, going door to door, etc. Moreover, it's important to realize that beyond the local organization there were many more people working in the "head office" so there were regional organizers, candidate schools, radio and television advertising, a leader's tour, etc.
It's really important always remember that the individual candidate is not alone---she's just the face of a very large team of mostly volunteers who are working together to promote their own particular vision of what Canada should be.
A lot comes up in this part of the conversation, but I'll just deal with two points.
First, Aisha talks about the job of being am MP as someone who "brings the voice of the constituents to the House". This is certainly a common point of view, but I'm not sure that it makes a lot of sense.
It's not that easy to really know what the "voice of the constituents" really is. Does she mean just the people who voted for her? Or does she mean everyone---even the people who profoundly disagree with her and the people who elected her? When there's a strong divide, does she argue for both sides and then step aside and not vote at all?
Also, how does she know what the "voice of the constituents" is? Does she just listen to the people that call her office and send letters? What about the overwhelming majority of people who never do that? Years ago our local MP heard so many people call in and complain about same-sex marriage that she broke ranks with the Party and voted against this. And yet, when it became legal, did mobs storm Parliament and burn it down? Maybe most people didn't care, and it was just a loud minority that bombarded her office. The fact is it's really, really hard to judge public opinion with any accuracy by just listening to people who talk to you or write letters. That's why there are scientific polling methods---they help us learn what ordinary people really think without being fooled by organized campaigns by angry, yet small, groups.
And let's not forget that just because a value or idea is popular doesn't mean that it's right. Over human history large minorities have been racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. If you'd polled Canadians 50 years ago about the dangers of climate change, they'd have said that it was a total non-issue---and they'd have been completely and utterly wrong. Politicians aren't elected to just "bring the voice of the constituents to the House", they also have a responsibility to learn about the complex facts about the problems that the nation faces and craft programs to deal with them. If it is important for politicians to listen to "the people", it's just important for elected officials to listen to "the experts" and then sell what they hear to "the people".
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| Michael Chong, photo by Tim Allman |
Ms. Jahangir also talks about not seeing anything about political parties in the constitution. This is because of the fact that Canada's constitution has two set of rules that govern it: written and unwritten. This came up in a previous interview that I did with Wellington-Halton Hill's MP, Michael Chong. I thought the best way to explain it would be to simply quote his answer to me on a related question.
We have written rules and those can be found in the standing orders of the House of Commons----which anyone can download in a pdf document. They're also found in written law, for example the Parliament of Canada Act. They're found in parts of our written constitution, the 1867, and 1982 Constitution Acts, for example, and then we have the unwritten rules which are the conventions that govern a lot of what we do in the Commons and it's committees. These unwritten rules---or "conventions" as they are often called---can evolve.
Political theorists often say that the test for an unwritten convention is two-fold. Can it be articulated? Secondly, do the actors in a political system act in conformity with that explicitly defined rule? If the answer is "yes", then an unwritten convention exists. They can evolve, and many have for many years. In the early 1980s there was a Supreme Court reference to the conventions that govern our system. The government of Pierre Trudeau asked the court if the written constitution allows the government to unilaterally patriate the constitution back from the United Kingdom. He also asked whether the unwritten constitution allows the same thing.
The Supreme Court said "Yes" to the first one, and "No" to the second. So there's an example of how our system works. Sometimes the unwritten rules are at odds with written ones. So the two parts are always in tension with one another. All of which is to say that as a result, the vast majority of MPs---when they first come to Ottawa---do not know the rules and how the place actually operates. And it takes some years to learn.
As Chong says, most candidates don't really know much about how Parliament runs. Luckily, there are schools that introduce newly-minted MPs to how it actually works and party veterans who are willing to mentor the newbies.
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Political parties may not be in the written constitution, but they are still essential to democratic decision-making. Even if people did try to outlaw them, they'd still exist. Indeed, they belong to that class of ideas that you can chase out the front door with a pitchfork only to have them climb in through a back window when you aren't looking.
Consider the following scenario. Canada has a revolution and outlaws political parties. An election is held and individual representatives get elected across the country. There are over 300 representatives in the new Parliament and they try to pass new legislation in order to get things done. Lots of people have ideas about what should come first, which results in hundreds of new bills. Who gets to decide what order they come in?
Some bright bean suggests that Parliament have a vote to set the order. Another MP says that it would be ridiculous for the members to just vote on the order just using the titles of the bills without having some discussion about what the proposed law is supposed to do and why. But this will take a lot of time with 300 people all having an equal right to discuss each one. And again, who gets to set the order of the bills discussed to decide the order of passing them?
Moreover, different groups of MPs find that they have interests in common. The MPs from rural Alberta, for example, decide that they want to do away with all environmental laws because they get in the way of making lots of money strip-mining their province. The MPs from the Northern Territories, in contrast, are concerned about Climate Change because if the permafrost all melts their infrastructure will collapse. In fact, both groups are so concerned about these issues that they start having meetings to discuss common strategies they can pursue to get the laws they want passed.
One option they both pursue is reaching out to other MPs in order to see if they can negotiate some sort of deal that will get support from them in order to get the legislation they want passed. The Northern MPs find out that a lot of folks in the cities to the South are willing to support their opposition to fossil fuels if the Northern rural people will help support policies to build electric cars and public transit so urban folks can have good jobs. Similarly, the rural Albertan MPs are able to get rural people in British Columbia to help them in exchange for allowing timber companies to clear cut the entire province in order to provide good, unionized jobs cutting old-growth timber. They also reach out to rural people on the East coast who want to have good jobs running factory trawlers without quotas.
Coalitions are being born. Deals are being hammered out. And then bills get passed. In effect, political parties rise again. That's how political parties climb back into the House through the bathroom window after you chased them out the front door through a revolution. The only difference is that without a formal recognition of the role that parties play in democracy, everything happens behind closed doors and without the input of ordinary citizens.
That's the important thing to remember. When I was young, people used to talk about decisions being made in "smoke-filled rooms". That was, people who ran the political parties up until then pretty much consisted of behind the scenes "wheelers and dealers" that the general public didn't really know much about. The idea was that at any political convention there'd be a room somewhere that you couldn't enter unless invited, and that was where all the important decisions got made.
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| 19th Century Cartoon of Smoke-Filled Room. Wikimedia Commons. Cropped by Bill Hulet |
Nowadays things are much different. There are laws that control how much money people can spend on leadership and nomination races, how much any single person can donate, and, what that money can be spent upon. Most parties also make the decisions based on membership votes instead of using delegates at conventions.
Of course, this isn't to say that "jiggery pokery" doesn't still go on. But when people find out about it, they are often upset. And if things get bad enough, regulations eventually get brought in to try to stop it from happening. Corruption and regulation are involved in an arms race, so you can never say that it has been completely been eliminated. But having said that, political parties are now transparent and democratic in ways that go beyond the wildest dreams of voters from days of yore.
If---in some sort of wild flight of naive fancy---political parties were outlawed, all those generations of formal regulation and growing political norms would disappear with the formal political parties. But because political parties are an inevitable outgrowth of representative democracy, they would just come back again---but without all the checks and balances that have been painstakingly built up over the years.
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To be fair to Aisha, none of this information is really all that important to her and any other candidate. As Michael says, there will be lots of "old hands" in the party to explain things to her after she gets elected. The really important part of being a candidate is about knowing how to connect with the public, and that's exactly what she wants to do. But I do think that the general public could benefit from a greater general knowledge about how our democratic system works. (That is the point of this series of articles.)
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That's enough for one week and the role of candidate. Next time I'll be talking with someone who represents another part of a political party. Stay safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask and keep your distance where appropriate. Remember, we are now not much more than an island of relative stability in a world where COVID continues to rage on.
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