The Conservative Party isn’t following the rules it set and expects all federal leadership candidates to comply with which is a “double standard,” says Conservative leadership candidate Brad Trost’s campaign.

Joseph Ben-Ami, campaign director for Mr. Trost’s (Saskatoon-University, Sask.) leadership bid, also said although there are 14 candidates running, the federal party’s ballot papers only allow party members to rank 10 leadership candidates, not 14.

The Conservative Party charged all leadership candidates $100,000 to enter the race, including a non-refundable $50,000 for registration and a $50,000 refundable for compliance and it’s unlikely anyone would drop out at this time.

Mr. Ben-Ami told The Hill Times the party signed a written contract with all the leadership candidates spelling out the rules governing the May leadership contest, but he said on at least two issues the party has failed to hold itself to account.

He said all money raised by the federal leadership candidates first goes to the Conservative Fund Canada and once the party takes a 10 per cent administration fee, it is contractually required to return the balance to the leadership candidates within a week. In Mr. Trost’s case, Mr. Ben-Ami said the party rarely follows its own timetable and in most cases, it takes several weeks before the campaign receives the money back from the Conservative Party.

“They all have a contractual relationship with the party,” said Mr. Ben-Ami, a veteran political strategist who used to work for Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day on the Hill. “The party said, ‘These are the rules and you have to follow these rules because if you don’t follow these rules, we’re going to fine you.’ Why is the party not following its own rules?”

According to the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership rules and procedures, the Conservative Fund Canada is required to “issue a cheque or electronic funds transfer on Thursday for those monies submitted by 4 p.m. ET the preceding Friday.”

Mr. Ben-Ami said fundraising is tough in this competition because of the high number of candidates and because the federal party is raising funds at the same time from the same pool of donors. Ideally, he said, the party should not have raised funds for the duration of the leadership campaign as the party is still making money charging a “10 per cent tariff” from all leadership campaigns.

“I wish the party wasn’t fundraising on its own from members while campaigns are out fundraising in the same pond,” said Mr. Ben-Ami.

Moreover, he said the Conservative Party leadership campaign has 14 registered candidates for the May convention, but the software used to tabulate the votes allows voting members to rank only 10 of the candidates. The party is using the preferential ballot system in which party members will rank all the leadership candidates numerically from most to least preferred, with the least favourite dropping off after the first ballot.

“Members of the party who vote because the system has this glitch in it will not be able to fully exercise their franchise as they were told they were going to. That’s all,” Mr. Ben Ami said. “Brad believes that, in principle, that’s wrong. As a practical matter, maybe at the end of the day it doesn’t make that much difference. As a principle it’s wrong.”

He said the Conservative Party is being “very lackadaisical on following the rules and refusing to hold itself to account” on these two issues.

Mr. Ben-Ami said if the party hopes to win the next election and form government it should learn how to run a leadership campaign properly.

“And for Pete’s sakes, we’re talking about forming government at some point in time, hopefully in 2019,” he said. “Brad’s position is, if we can’t govern ourselves properly and if we, as a party, can’t hold ourselves accountable and follow our own rules and follow through with our commitment to our own people, how could we be expected to do a better [job] when we’re in government. This is not a small thing.”

Mr. Ben-Ami said this situation raises the question of why only the candidates have to follow the rules and described it as a “double standard” on the part of the Conservative Party. “Sounds a little bit to me like a double standard,” he said.

Although Mr. Trost’s campaign has not been affected by either of the two issues, he said, it’s the principle that both parties should keep their commitments. Specifically, Mr. Ben-Ami said the ballot paper issue could affect the lower tier of candidates, but declined to say who the lower tier of candidates are and denied that Mr. Trost’s campaign is in it.

Cory Hann, the Conservative Party’s director of communications, meanwhile, denied the party is slow to return money to leadership candidates.

“As stated in our rules, we pay weekly everything that was processed the previous week and submit back to the leadership campaigns,” said Mr. Hann, in an email to The Hill Times last week. “We’ve experienced very little delay in that, if at all.”

As for the leadership ballot paper issue, Mr. Hann did not explain why the Conservative Party members would be able to rank only 10 and not all 14 candidates. He also did not say if the party has any plans to fix this glitch or if it expects four candidates to drop out of the race before the convention.

“Our election system vendor we use is Dominion Voting. They are Canada’s largest election voting system company,” said Mr. Hann. “They’ve previously provided voting systems to both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party in leadership elections, and has had their systems used in both Canada, the U.S. and internationally for all types of elections. All official candidates in our race will be listed on the ballot. Party members will be able to rank up to ten of their choices, should they choose.”

Some leadership campaigns acknowledged both issues but declined to comment for this article saying they could be fined out of their compliance deposit by the party “for attacking” the party policies publicly.

The 14 Conservative Party leadership candidates include nine incumbent Conservative MPs: Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills, Ont.), Kellie Leitch (Simcoe-Grey, Ont.), Maxime Bernier (Beauce, Que.), Deepak Obhrai (Calgary Forest Lawn, Ont.), Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.), Erin O’Toole (Durham, Ont.), Steven Blaney (Bellechasse -Les Etchemins -Lévis, Que.) Lisa Raitt (Milton, Ont.), and Mr. Trost. Former Conservative MPs Pierre Lemieux, Chris Alexander and Andrew Saxton are also running. The other two candidates include businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary and businessman Rick Peterson.

According to a Mainstreet poll of 1,895 Conservative Party members conducted for iPolitics and released last week, Mr. Trost had 1.1 per cent of support and would be considered a lower-tiered candidate, while Mr. O’Leary (20.9%), Ms. Leitch (16.2%), and Mr. Bernier (15.3%) would be considered the top three favourite candidates. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.24 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

“It’s not going to affect us,” Mr. Ben-Ami said. “We’re pretty happy where we are in the overall ranking right now. It won’t hurt us one way or the other.”

The same Mainstreet poll indicated the following support for the other candidates: Mr. Scheer (9.9%), Ms. Raitt (6.5%), Mr. Chong (5.7%), Mr. O’Toole (4.1%), Mr. Blaney (3.3%), Mr. Lemieux (3.1 %), Mr. Alexander (2.8%), Mr. Obhrai (1.8%), Mr. Peterson (1.6%), Mr. Saxton (0.8%), and seven per cent were undecided.

As of last week, there was no public indication from any candidate that they would drop out of the race. If a candidate drops out at this stage, he or she will lose $50,000 of the non-refundable registration fee.

The Conservative Party will choose the new leader at the convention on May 27 in Toronto.

Mr. Obhrai said he’s heard about the ballot paper issue, but doesn’t know any details. He said his campaign has been receiving transfers from the party on time. Mr. Obhrai, however, said that as a principle, the party must ensure that all candidates are treated fairly.

Former Conservative MP John Reynolds, co-chair of Mr. Bernier’s campaign, said he was not aware if the Quebec MP’s campaign had any issues related to getting the money back from the party on time. Mr. Reynolds said he was also unaware of any ballot paper software issues, but said that all leadership candidates paid the required $100,000 and the party must do everything it can to ensure the Conservative Party’s leadership rules are equal for all candidates.

“You don’t make promises that you can’t keep. That’s the number one issue in politics,” said Mr. Reynolds who was on vacation in Mexico. “The party should be fair to all candidates.”

Tim Powers, a senior Conservative Party strategist, told The Hill Times he was confident the party will fix the ballot paper glitch if all candidates stayed in the race until the convention day on May 27. He also said he didn’t know all the facts related to the transfer of money to candidates but was not surprised to hear the complaint. Mr. Powers said these kinds of complaints come up in every party’s leadership race in which the political party thinks candidates are not fulfilling all their obligations and candidates think otherwise.

“The campaign may feel the party is not doing something and the party may feel the campaigns are lacking,” said Mr. Powers, vice-chairman of Summa Strategies. “Whether it’s this issue or another issue, there’s always a little bit of back and forth around the effectiveness of certain initiatives or programs.”

Mr. Peterson said that his campaign is receiving the money back from the party on time and referred the questions related to the ballot paper software glitch to the Conservative Party communications office.

arana@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times