A Blogger Proud to Blow Whistle

The point of the email was clear. After mounting national pressure, the Liberal party office was taking over a Young Liberal organization that had grown by leaps and bounds by way of preferential treatment, democratic interference and deceit.

Jamie Elmhirst, Liberal Party of Canada president in British Columbia, sent out a forceful message last Thursday after an embarrassing scandal at the UBC Young Liberal club started to receive widespread attention.

Through my company website, TDH Strategies, I embarked on exposing the injustice taking place around the club's annual general meeting. The crux of the matter was the fact that 77 new members were being refused the right to vote due to a calculated loophole in a constitution that had been deliberately drafted to favour the Paul Martin leadership organization back in 2002.

And, with a little help from some national media outlets and political pundits, the story exploded into the political consciousness.

Blame the blogs?

In spite of what I hope to be the democratization of political practices that are well past their expiry date, however, the tone of Elmhirst's email gave much cause for concern. In particular, these statements stuck out like a sharp thorn.

"On a personal note, I find the situation at UBC a disappointment; both the manner in which the meeting was called and the playing out of this issue in various blogs and in the media is an embarrassment to our party and to the Young Liberals of BC. I do not consider anyone involved to have entirely clean hands.

A new AGM at UBC will occur. That meeting will be supervised by the officials from the LPC (BC). If positions are contested, the person who earned the most votes will win. Hopefully we will cease to see the playing out of personal rivalries on blogs and in the media in a way that is embarrassing to far more people than just those directly involved."

Let's be very clear about this course of events: the only reason that the party stepped into this affair was because of the light shone from the media spotlight. Without this scrutiny, it is likely that it would have been business as usual in a Liberal party organization that many consider to be the most cutthroat of any province in the country.

Bigger problems

The tricks of leadership-inspired youth politics - paper student clubs that don't exist outside of a falsified document (each of which is entitled to 4 delegates at the upcoming leadership convention), snap elections without proper notice to allow certain candidate slates a distinct advantage, restricting access to ballot boxes for individuals or clubs that do not tow the party line - are only indicative of a larger problem within the Liberal Party of Canada, particularly on the eve of selecting a new leader.

Membership regulations have absolutely no consistency across the country. Whereas Ontario is considering allowing 25 membership forms per person, British Columbia caps its allotment at 10. In British Columbia, membership fees have just been raised to $20 ($10 for youth and seniors), while Ontario allows each of its 106 constituency associations to set their own prices.

These discrepancies serve as welcome mats to exploitation. With the amount of bitter feelings that still exist in the Liberal party following a leadership battle that left a trail of hundreds if not thousands of political bodies in its wake, it is time to standardize rules and procedures so that the mistakes of the past don't repeat themselves.

Grassroots scrutiny

For Mr. Elmhirst to attack the whistleblower is absolutely ridiculous. When a party refuses to take the proper course of action in the face of blatant abuses, it is up to the grassroots membership to ensure that the organization is run in a fair and just manner. As such, skewed party loyalties to practices that I fundamentally don't believe in will not prevent me from continuing to bring attention to these types of issues in the future.

I believe the guiding principles in politics can and should be integrity, ethics and accountability.

Jonathan Ross is a public policy and political consultant through his company TDH Strategies, and writes daily political commentaries on his website.