Leadership convention

In Canadian politics, a leadership convention is held by a political party when the party needs to choose a leader due to a vacancy or a challenge to the incumbent leader.

Overview

In Canada, the leader of a party generally remains that party's de facto candidate for Prime Minister until such time as he or she dies, resigns or is dismissed by the party. In the New Democratic Party and some of its provincial branches, the position of party leader was treated as all other positions on the party's executive committee, and open for election at party conventions generally held every two years, although incumbent leaders rarely face more than token opposition.

Usually, an outgoing leader retains the party leadership until their successor is chosen at a leadership convention. However, in some circumstances, such as the death or immediate resignation of a leader, this is not possible, and an interim leader is appointed by the party for the duration of the leadership campaign.

In a few instances where a single leadership candidate has been unopposed by the entry deadline, the leadership convention has instead served as a venue for the membership to ratify the candidate. Even in such situations, however, the convention must still take place before the candidate can assume the formal and permanent leadership of the party, even if they are already serving as the party's interim leader.

Traditionally, each riding association of a party holds a special meeting to elect a fixed number of delegates to represent it at a leadership convention. These meetings would often select "alternate delegates" or "alternates", who would attend the convention, but vote only if one of the delegates from the riding association was unable to attend. In addition, delegates are often selected by the party's youth and women's associations in each riding, and party associations at university and college campuses.

In addition to the elected delegates, a large number of ex officio delegates attend and vote at leadership conventions. These ex officio delegates are automatically entitled to attend by virtue of being an elected member of parliament for that party, a member of an affiliated party in a provincial legislature, a member of the party's national or provincial executive, of the executive of an affiliated women's or youth organization.

Because of the implementation of "one member one vote" (OMOV) systems and proportional delegate elections by most parties, conventions have declined in importance. In recent years, the result of the vote is either known before the convention, or the voting does not take place at the venue.

In a pure "one member one vote" system, each party member casts a ballot to elect the leader, and all ballots have equal weight. There are modified OMOV system may allow all members to vote but may weigh them differently in order to ensure equality among ridings regardless of party membership or which guarantee a proportion of the vote to historically important constituencies such as labour in the case of the NDP.

The Liberal Party of Canada held the first leadership convention in 1919, electing William Lyon Mackenzie King. Prior to that the leader of the party was chosen by the party's parliamentary caucus. The historical Conservative Party used a leadership convention to select R.B. Bennett as party leader in 1927.

The Parti Québécois was the first political party in Canada to adopt an OMOV system. Most provincial and federal parties adopted forms of OMOV in the 1990s.

Until 2003, when it adopted an OMOV system, every biennial convention of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and its successor, the New Democratic Party, in the twentieth century was a leadership convention. However, in practice, contested elections were only held in the NDP when there was a declared leadership race.

Both the modern Conservative Party and the NDP have instituted "one member one vote" systems in recent years. In 2003, the federal NDP used a modified system where the vote is calculated, so that ballots cast by labour delegates had 25% weight in the total result while votes cast by party members had 75%. While this modification is still used by some provincial sections of the NDP, the federal NDP now uses a pure OMOV process without a carve out for labour affiliates.

The modern Conservative Party has adopted the Progressive Conservative Party system of OMOV, where each riding has equal weight in a point system. The party's other predecessors, the Reform Party of Canada and Canadian Alliance, had pure OMOV systems.

The Liberals were the last party to select its leaders using delegated conventions, though more recent Liberal conventions used a system where delegates in a riding were apportioned by proportional representation. In 2009 the Liberal Party approved a constitutional amendment requiring future leadership elections to be conducted using a modified OMOV system in which each riding is accorded equal weight. The 2009 convention that ratified Michael Ignatieff's leadership was conducted under the old rules. The last delegated Liberal convention to feature a contested race was the 2006 convention that chose Stéphane Dion.

The Bloc Québécois has used a pure OMOV system since 1997.

Recent federal conventions

Four of the major parties have held conventions recently to choose new leaders:

The new Conservative Party of Canada chose former Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper as its new leader on March 20, 2004. The other candidates were former Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement and former Magna International CEO Belinda Stronach.

The Liberals, on December 2, 2006 chose Stéphane Dion as their leader at the 2006 Liberal leadership convention. His successor, Michael Ignatieff, was officially selected at the 2009 leadership convention however as he had effectively become leader as a result of the 2008–2009 Canadian parliamentary dispute the 2009 leadership convention was uncontested and served the function of ratifying Ignatieff's leadership. The 2009 Liberal leadership convention was the last federal convention in which the leader was chosen by delegates. The Liberal Party has adopted a constitutional amendment requiring future leadership elections to be conducted according to a weighted One Member One Vote system in which all party members could cast ballots but in which they would be counted so that each riding had equal weight.

Following the resignation of Gilles Duceppe, the Bloc Québécois, on December 11, 2011 chose former MP Daniel Paillé as their leader at the 2011 Bloc Québécois leadership convention.[1] The other candidates were sitting MPs Jean-François Fortin and Maria Mourani.

Following the death of Jack Layton in August 2011, the New Democratic Party chose Thomas Mulcair as leader on March 24, 2012, in Toronto, winning with 57.2% of the vote on the fourth and final ballot.[2] At the convention, Mulcair beat fellow candidates Brian Topp, Nathan Cullen, Peggy Nash, Paul Dewar, Martin Singh, and Niki Ashton.

See also

Federal parties

Provincial parties

Alberta

British Columbia

Manitoba

New Brunswick

Newfoundland and Labrador

Nova Scotia

Ontario

Prince Edward Island

Quebec

Saskatchewan

References

  1. ↑ "Daniel Paille new leader of Bloc Quebecois". CBC News, December 11, 2011.
  2. ↑ "NDP leadership convention: Thomas Mulcair holds on for victory". Vancouver Sun. 24 March 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2012.

External links