Are nomination audits just a PR exercise?

CAMBRIDGE — The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario likes to say it’s using a third-party observer to ensure its contested nominations around the province are fair, democratic and transparent. The only problem is it’s not really true.

From Cambridge to Scarborough to Hamilton to Ottawa, controversies and voting irregularities at nomination meetings have dogged the party as it leads in the polls and has interested candidates crowding into local races.

Because those nominations are easy to manipulate — with no ID required to vote, fake memberships can flood a contest — PC Leader Patrick Brown has said the party will rely on auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to validate the results. It’s paying them about $300,000 to do this work.

But in reality, PwC isn’t validating anything. Instead, the hiring of PwC is a publicrelations exercise, with no real vetting of the contested nominations, party insiders say.

“It’s a great (public-relations) exercise. But I don’t believe anybody has seen any other substantive value from the $300,000 that they’re charging,” said John Mykytyshyn, a veteran political strategist and consultant who has worked on PC nomination campaigns around the province.

“Patrick Brown says ‘Not to worry, PwC is in charge of these things now.’ Great. But what is PwC actually doing?”

Brown did not respond to an interview request to talk about the role PwC is playing at nomination meetings. A PwC media spokesperson in Toronto said the firm couldn’t discuss the details of any contracts with clients.

Some may wonder why PwC wouldn’t want to clarify its role in these nominations. But critics point out that the party’s chief financial officer and vicechair, John Simcoe, is also a

senior partner at the auditing firm.

In Cambridge, where Tanya Khattra — a so-called parachute candidate from Calgary with no previous political experience — has signed up more new party memberships than any of her challengers, some think a certified vote could put an end to complaints the process is being manipulated.

But a leaked report from PwC makes it clear the firm has not been hired to do that. Its job is not to catch fraudulent ballots or confirm that memberships were signed by real people — tricks employed by all parties exploiting loopholes in the rules.

After observing a contentious nomination meeting in June in Scarborough Centre, where the election of Thenusha Parani is being appealed, the auditing firm explained in an internal report it wasn’t hired to guarantee that the results were legitimate.

“We were not engaged to and did not conduct an audit, the objective of which would be the expression of an opinion on the design and operating effectiveness of controls supporting balloting process,” the report read.

“Similarly, we were not engaged to validate election results.”

Michael Harris, the MPP for KitchenerConestoga and a PC party member, said he believes the vast majority of nomination meetings to choose a candidate have been carried out fairly and transparently. And he says while the Liberals may appoint socalled star candidates, his party believes in letting anyone compete to be a candidate — a process than can get messy sometimes.

He admits there are questions about how legitimate some of those new party memberships in Cambridge may be. In some cases, he suspects people are being signed up to vote without their knowledge.

“There will likely actually be a lot of PC members in Cambridge who have no idea they’re members,” Harris said. “It’s going to happen, because they’re aggressively signing up members, and they’re not all going to be legitimate.”

But he also said it was his understanding that PwC was auditing the nomination results, a misconception shared by others.

Mykytyshyn, who is a friend of Bert Larango, another candidate seeking the nomination in Cambridge, said it looks as if strings have been pulled to give Khattra a leg up. Changing the nomination date is one of the most common ways to alter the outcome of a race, he said.

He points to the party’s sudden decision to bump up the nomination date by a month, and the fact Khattra’s campaign is being helped by well-connected party organizer Gulab Singh Saini, as evidence that someone may be trying to give her an advantage.

“What’s the reasonable explanation for it not being gamesmanship?” Mykytyshyn said. “Certainly, it fails the smell test.”

But Harris argues people are drawing connections that aren’t really there, and says the party has no favoured candidate in Cambridge. A counter-argument to the allegations of tampering could be that the nomination meeting was called early to stop Khattra’s ability to sell more memberships, he said.

“I’m very frustrated with what’s happening in Cambridge, with what’s perceived to be an outsider coming in. But that’s democracy at work,” he said.

“We’ve got open and fair nominations, and she’s coming in and trying to win one.”

He adds that there’s nothing in the rules that bans someone like Khattra from running, and says if local party members don’t like it, it’s up to them to back another candidate and sign up more supporters than she does.

If Khattra’s residency is an issue, party members in Cambridge have the power to choose someone else, Harris said. That’s the way the system is supposed to work, at least.

“The party likes to think that local members will decide if that’s important, through the vote. If it’s important, then they won’t elect her as their candidate,” he said.