Wilson-raybould, Philpott to run as Independents this fall
WILSON-RAYBOULD, PHILPOTT PLANNING TO SECURE RE-ELECTION IN COMPETITIVE RIDINGS
The problem with setting up a small anarchist community, lamented the English playwright Alan Bennett, was that people wouldn’t obey the rules.
Former Liberal cabinet ministers Jody Wilson-raybould and Jane Philpott may discover there are similar drawbacks to being Independent MPS, in the unlikely event they are re-elected in October.
The two former ministers held separate but coordinated announcements Monday in their respective ridings of Vancouver Granville and Markham-stouffville.
The prospective candidates both wore white. “White goes with everything — bring it on, we’ll work with everyone, blue, red, orange and green,” said Philpott.
Both appeared intoxicated by the freedom to speak without restraint. “There are no rules —
we’re going to paint outside party lines,” enthused Philpott, the former Treasury Board president.
Both said they have enjoyed life as Independent MPS after being asked to leave the Liberal caucus over the SNC affair. “I didn’t lose my voice, I found my voice,” said Philpott.
Both disparaged the party system under which they were elected in 2015. Wilson-raybould spoke witheringly about “partisanship trumping principle, exclusion trumping inclusion, lack of diversity of voices … (and) too much power at the centre.”
She said she wants to “transform our political culture,” presumably to one closer to the Indigenous politics in which she is steeped, where participants strive toward consensus.
There is a market for such thinking. There are many MPS in all parties who are sick of the tribalism, the zero-sum thinking, the tyranny of prevailing opinion, the sense that reasoned debate has lost its power.
But unlike Wilson-raybould and Philpott, they understand that our system of responsible government relies on the institutional competition that parties bring.
Instead of providing succour to their political adversaries by sabotaging their own parties, most MPS try to bring their colleagues around to their way of thinking. Political parties in the Westminster system are a messy fusion of compromises.
Partisanship has always been a dirty word but the demonization of progressives by populists, and vice versa, has debased the concept still further.
Undermining the party structure that organizes parliament is a dangerous game — one that creates opportunities for demagogues and agitators. In the U.K., three-quarters of respondents to one poll by the Hansard Society said they feel the main parties “no longer serve the interests of the country” and 54 per cent want “a strong leader who’s willing to break the rules.”
Perhaps fortunately, the odds against being re-elected as an independent are ferocious. Bill Casey, who now sits as a Liberal MP, was the last person who managed it, after refusing to vote for the Conservative budget in 2007. He was rejected as the Tory candidate in his Nova Scotia riding and instead ran, and won, as an independent in the 2008 election.
“All the decks are stacked against you,” he said in an interview. “You can’t raise a dime until after the election is called and you are certified by Elections Canada. That’s a tremendous disadvantage.” (A prospective candidate can accept donations but cannot issue a tax receipt for any contributions received before their nomination is confirmed by the returning officer. Yet contributions can be made to a party or a riding association, giving candidates aligned with a party a head start).
While Casey said he relished the chance to put the interests of his riding ahead of any other party-ordained consideration, he acknowledged the life of an independent MP is a lonely existence. He sat in the back row in the House of Commons, where he got to know his young seatmate, Justin Trudeau. Casey resigned his seat in 2009 to work for the Nova Scotia government and had no thoughts of returning to Parliament until he was offered the chance to run for Trudeau’s Liberals in the 2015 election.
He is proof that it can be done, if your name is well known. Wilson-raybould and Philpott are probably among the top 10 best-known politicians in Canada.
But both ridings are competitive. Wilson-raybould won Vancouver-granville with 44 per cent of the vote, ahead of the NDP with 27 per cent and the Conservatives with 26 per cent. The Greens trailed with just 3 per cent, which may explain why she didn’t opt to run for Elizabeth May’s party, despite considering it “very seriously.” The fact that Wilson-raybould did not give equally serious scrutiny to the NDP speaks volumes about that party’s current vigour.
“I know who I am. I am not a party person,” Wilson-raybould said, to which the entire Liberal caucus would chime in: “And so say all of us.” Former colleagues claim the former justice minister flirted with a breach of cabinet solidarity over the Indigenous rights bill last fall.
Philpott’s riding looks to be an even tougher fight. It was a straight Conservative-liberal contest in 2015 but that was at the high-water mark of Trudeau’s popularity. It is more natural Conservative terrain — when the votes from the 2011 election were redistributed to the riding created in 2012 under electoral boundary changes, the Tories won handily.
Philpott said she is relying on disconnected citizens who don’t normally vote to turn out and support her. That’s the very definition of a long shot — running as the political candidate for people who don’t believe politics can make a positive difference.
Philpott warned no one should “underestimate the potential of small things” to change the world. It’s true, no one should be complacent in the age of disruption. The two big parties in the U.K., which between them garnered 82 per cent of the vote in the 2017 election, just won 22.8 per cent of votes cast in the European Parliament election.
But there is no evidence that Canada is keen to go down that rocky road and embrace political anarchy any time soon.
YOU CAN’T RAISE A DIME UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION IS CALLED … THAT’S A TREMENDOUS DISADVANTAGE