The federal Conservatives are about to undergo another ritual bloody coronation of a new leader. With a few rules that make them distinctive, they will do this just the way that most other parties do with the same boring process that produces mostly establishment candidates. This will do little to renew a party that desperately needs to look in the mirror and figure out what it stands for.

The CPC constitution gives only a few broad parameters for the rules under which they will select their new leader, leaving the Leadership Selection Committee with huge latitude to decide the process. They should use the opportunity to radically open it up to give that party the opportunity to renew itself. The best example to point to, would be to mirror the U.S. primary system for selecting presidential candidates.

To start, the CPC should throw open the vote to more than just card-carrying members. They should instead invite all Canadians to register to vote as “temporary members,” without the poll-tax of a $15 fee. This will open up the process to everyone that might consider voting Conservative, and massively drive up turnout.

People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier and Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer (source: Wiki Commons)

In the 2017 CPC leadership race, only 141,362 members voted, constituting just 2.3 per cent of those who would vote Conservative in the 2019 general election. In the U.S. by contrast, roughly 29.5 per cent of Republican voters cast ballots in the primaries to select their party’s candidate for president. In short, right-leaning voters in the U.S .are nearly eight times as likely as their counterparts in Canada to get involved in choosing their top candidate for office.

The CPC could allow every Canadian citizen that agrees with their party’s principle’s to obtain a short-term membership that would allow them to vote in the party’s leadership election, while leaving long-term, paid members to continue to exercise their rights over other matters (mostly, getting solicited for money). These new temporary members would provide a huge pool of people that the party could then try to convert into more permanent members and donors.

Canadian Conservatives would also be wise to consider staggered voting, either by province, or by regional cluster of constituencies. In the U.S., states vote in stages, with Iowa and New Hampshire going early, followed by South Carolina, and then groups of other states.

This has the effect of culling the field of “also ran candidates” in Iowa and New Hampshire, and narrowing the stage down to the top contenders by “Super Tuesday.” The result is that a race that might start with a dozen or more candidates before Iowa, has only the top contenders left by the later stages, allowing the party’s supporters to make a more serious judgement call on those with a realistic chance of making it to the end.

By contrast, the 2017 CPC leadership race – which votes all on a single day with a single ballot – had 14 candidates, all but one of which made it to the convention. Members voting for Andrew Saxton or Rick Peterson were able to rank others like Andrew Scheer or Maxime Bernier as their second and third choices, but they were never forced to see Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier slog it out mano a mano, and make a choice between the two of them.

The CPC constitution allows its Leadership Election Committee the latitude to allow – hypothetically – small Prince Edward Island or a randomly selected number of constituencies around the country, to vote first as a kind of Canadian Iowa. After this first vote, surely the hopeless candidates would drop out of the race, and potentially support someone with a better chance.

In the 2017 race, three candidates received less than 1 per cent of the vote on the first ballot, and half of the crowded field received less than five per cent. In fact, only three candidates received more than 10 per cent on the fist ballot, yet none but Kevin O’Leary dropped out.

By allowing staggered voting – either by province, or clusters of constituencies in large provinces – the process will also generate much more interest from the press and potential members than an orgy of results on a single evening.

Integral to the entire process is fairness and objectivity. In the U.S., the process is overseen by each state’s non-partisan electoral commission. In all Canadian parties, leadership races and nominations are overseen and administered by party volunteers and bureaucrats. As well meaning as these people might be, they are inherently political, and are not above calling their objectivity into question. The Tories should do their best to replicate the American system in this regard by contracting out the administration of the entire race to a third party without connection to the party.

This way, questions like those around balloting in the last Tory leadership race will be less likely to taint the results, and thus keep their party more united after every candidate but one is inevitably disappointed.

There are of course drawbacks to the American system of selecting candidates, but they pale in comparison with those in the Canadian system. The American primary process is so successful at allowing a wide field of candidates and voters in the process, that it has managed to maintain a strict two-party system, despite electing all of their congressmen and senators in the same process that we use for MPs and MLAs. It is strong evidence that if everyone feels they have a say in the process, that they will be less likely to strike out on their own and create rivals, like the NDP or Reform Party.

Canada’s Tories can lay some claim to being a grassroots party, but they are still a rigidly controlled, top-down operation desperately in need of new blood. Opening the door to participation to every Canadian that shares their values would be the best way to bring it in.