As nominations get closer scrutiny, Conservatives quietly drop ‘bulk membership’ buys

The Conservative Party of Canada is phasing out bulk membership submissions, a controversial practice that has prompted claims of fraud and questionable activity in the past.

The party’s national council has voted to amend its bylaws to drop the option — which allowed electoral district associations (EDAs) and nomination campaigns to purchase memberships for prospective Conservatives en masse and then forward payment and personal details to party headquarters at a later date.

The change was enacted earlier this month. All outstanding bulk membership transactions must be reported by the end of June, Jeremy Hollingsworth, the party’s deputy director of political operations, said in a June 9 memo to EDA presidents and candidate nomination applicants obtained by CBC News.

The policy shift comes at a time of closer public scrutiny of internal party nomination contests — a part of Canada’s democracy that doesn’t get a lot of oversight.

As claims of foreign interference dominate the political conversation in Ottawa, some experts are calling for tighter controls over the process that picks party nominees for an MP’s seat.

While Elections Canada has rules on financing, the mechanics of these contests are largely left to the individual parties.

Political ethicists have long warned that bulk membership transactions are open to abuse because nefarious campaign operatives could break the rules and purchase memberships on others’ behalf.

Any Canadian aged 14 and over who supports the party’s principles can join the Conservatives provided they pay the membership fee with a personal cheque or with their own credit card.

Up to now, the party has allowed EDAs and nomination candidates to send one cheque to HQ to cover the cost of bulk memberships if there’s a signed application form attached to each name on the accompanying list.

A ‘rotten … corruptible’ process

But when hundreds or thousands of membership applications are coming in at the same time, it’s more difficult to conduct due diligence and ensure that every member actually pays their own way by reimbursing the EDA or candidate for the fees.

Nelson Wiseman is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto and an expert on political parties. He said the bulk membership process has “always been rotten.”

“Bulk membership, by definition, is corruptible. It speaks well to the Conservatives that they’re doing away with this,” he told CBC News. “It’s probably motivated by party actors who’ve seen firsthand how this can be so easily abused.

“A person should have direct contact with the party. It shouldn’t be, ‘Oh, I got my membership through Joe Blow.’

“You have party strategists that spend all their time thinking, ‘How can we use the rules to our advantage?’ There’s a reason why parties haven’t had a prohibition on this in the past — they want to get as many members as possible and collect all the money.”

Wiseman said bulk purchases create short-term party affiliations that may not last longer than the nomination contest.

“With this change, membership numbers will decline. But as Lenin said, ‘Better fewer, but better,'” he said.

The new bulk membership directive follows the party’s 2022 decision to ban the use of pre-paid credit cards to cover membership fees in the last leadership election.

Then-candidate Pierre Poilievre said this payment method was open to “fraud” because a leadership campaign could purchase “fake” memberships and unfairly tilt the race in one direction.

In a media statement, Conservative Party president Rob Batherson said the party decided to delete the section of its rules that allowed for bulk membership purchases to “bring our membership bylaw into alignment with the successful 2022 Leadership Election,” which also prohibited bulk membership sales by campaigns.

Batherson didn’t offer any further explanation for the change.

‘There’s a lot of nefariousness’

Nomination contests decide who will carry a party’s banner in an election for a seat in the House of Commons. They’ve faced more scrutiny in recent weeks after reports of foreign interference in Canada’s democratic process.

There’s been a push in some circles to have Elections Canada administer nomination contests to prevent abuse and better police a party process that has consequences for all people living in a particular riding.

Wiseman said it’s time to “smash the current system.”

“Now we’ve gotten to the stage where there’s a lot of nefariousness — and it’s being cranked up more and more,” he said. “There may be a role for Elections Canada in this.”

Another option, Wiseman said, is to restrict the right to vote in nomination contests to members who have been around a while — not fly-by-night members who have no sustained interest in the party’s success.

For example, he said, voting in a nomination contest could be restricted to members who have been with the party for at least six months.

Liberal-turned-Independent MP Han Dong’s nomination contest has been in the spotlight since media reports suggested Chinese operatives had a hand in securing his right to run for the Liberal Party in the general election.

Global News reported that Chinese international students with questionable credentials were transported into the riding and coerced to vote in Dong’s favour for the Liberal nomination.

Former governor general David Johnston, the Liberal government’s ex-special rapporteur on interference, probed the claims and found unspecified “irregularities” in the party’s 2019 nomination contest in Don Valley North.

Johnston said there is “well-grounded suspicion” that those irregularities can be tied to the Chinese consulate in Toronto.

The Conservative Party hasn’t been immune to claims of questionable nomination races.

The most recent example erupted in the southwestern Ontario riding of Oxford during the Conservative nomination race for the upcoming June 19 byelection.

One of the candidates, Woodstock city-county Coun. Deb Tait, accused the party of favouring her rival Arpan Khanna, who won the nomination.

Tait, the daughter of former Conservative MP Dave MacKenzie, has said the party didn’t thoroughly check voter identification.

The party maintains Khanna won the race fair and square — and by a large margin.