In the months following the Liberal Party of Canada’s major defeat in 2011, grassroots Grits believed that they were, in effect, building and creating a new party. I campaigned to be the Liberal Party’s national policy chair at that point in time on a platform designed to help build the most open political party in Canadian history.

And it wasn’t just my policy chair campaign that promised an open party, either. Proposals were made to limit the leader’s ability to veto policy resolutions that he didn’t want included in the platform. The party adopted a plan to open the leadership selection process to more than just dues-paying party members.

The reason for this approach was clear: In the past, one of the principal mistakes that our party made was picking a leader without enough grassroots input, who would then tell us all what to believe. The party understood that in order to rebuild, we would first have to clarify our principles. Only then could we pick a leader who embodied our values.

In this vein, our party held a biennial convention in Ottawa in January 2012 — the convention at which I was a candidate for national policy chair — in which there proved to be tremendous support for the idea of a grassroots-led, open party. Even candidates for the hotly contested presidency of the party were putting forward concrete, tangible proposals for how to make the Liberals more open, transparent and accessible.

In the spring of 2013, the Liberal grassroots overwhelmingly threw their support behind Justin Trudeau, a leadership candidate who promised to further the trend of openness within the party by calling for open nominations to be held in every single riding. I wanted to be a part of this team — a truly open political party, in which anyone can run for Parliament and share ideas directly with the public.

Last week, Trudeau broke that promise by blocking the candidacy of Christine Innes in downtown Toronto, ultimately to protect star candidate Chrystia Freeland from the possibility of having to compete in a difficult nomination battle.

I decided that I could not, in good conscience, campaign to be a part of a team of candidates if others seeking to join that team were prevented from doing so because their ideas or ambitions ran contrary to the party leader’s interest. Trudeau’s decision to block Innes’s candidacy was a direct assault on the vision of an open party for which so many Liberals have fought.

My decision to withdraw my candidacy from the nomination race in Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas was not the most politically expedient thing for me to do. My team had raised a solid amount of capital, and I was confident that if I worked hard enough over the summer, I would have a fair shot at becoming a Member of Parliament.

Independents seldom get elected in Canada. There is one political party on the spectrum with which I broadly identify on social, fiscal and national unity issues and it’s the Liberal party. To block a candidacy, in effect, is to prevent someone from running for Parliament. That’s not fair and it’s not democratic.

I am a strong believer in our country’s founding democratic principles, including: Parliament as a place for dialogue, a government that is accountable to Parliament, and party leaders who remain accountable to their respective caucuses (not vice-versa). We have been entrusted these principles by previous generations and, as a country, we cannot abandon them the way the Reform Party did when it became the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper’s leadership.

Democratic societies and organizations should not content themselves simply with the knowledge that they are better than the alternative. They must hold themselves to the highest possible standard. With the Canadian public focused on issues surrounding ethics, wasteful expenses and corruption among their elected officials, now is an opportune time to have a conversation about restoring openness, fair play and dialogue to our democracy, and how to pass these values on to future generations.

It is my hope that my withdrawal from the nomination race I was contesting will help draw attention to the fact that, although we do seek to form a government, we cannot compromise on our values in order to do so. We owe it to the Canadian people to remain true to our principles. I look forward to continuing to work with grassroots Liberal friends and colleagues to help build the most open political party in Canadian history.

Zach Paikin is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada.

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