What if court backs Glover?

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/11/2021 (1040 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Former PC leadership contender Shelly Glover will be back in court on Nov. 19 to challenge the results of that race. Despite Glover’s allegations and her contention that she was in fact the premier, Heather Stefanson was sworn in as premier. Lieutenant Governor Janice Filmon did her job by appointing a premier that was most likely to enjoy the confidence of a majority of MLAs. That was Stefanson.

What might result from Glover’s day in court? The court might find that it has no jurisdiction to rule on an internal party race. Or it might hear the case and agree with Glover’s argument that a recount or even a new vote is needed.

But imagine the following scenario: the court calls for a recount or a re-vote and Glover ekes out a victory over Stefanson. What then? Would Stefanson resign as premier, paving the way for Glover to be sworn in? Or — and hear me out — would Stefanson simply remain as premier despite the vote because she enjoys the support of the majority of Tory MLAs in the legislature?

The reason I’m asking is because what matters when a premier is selected is who can command the confidence of the legislature, or the support of the most MLAs. What party members want matters only to the extent that MLAs are willing to go along with the result of party leadership contests. This is why Glover’s call for the lieutenant governor to delay Stefanson’s swearing-in was wrong-headed: Stefanson clearly had the confidence necessary to become premier and it would have been a dereliction of Filmon’s duty not to have appointed her.

But MLAs may soon have a decision to make if my scenario plays out: ignore the results of an increasingly contested leadership race and allow Stefanson, whom most of them personally support, to stay on as premier, or respect the results of the recount and boot Stefanson out in favour of Glover.

To be honest, I don’t think there is a high likelihood that this will happen. Political scientists could not be so lucky to see such constitutional drama play out right before our eyes. But it does illustrate some of the contradictions in the modern methods Canadian parties use to select their leaders. Notably, party members are told they have the power to select the premier; indeed, we heard this countless times in media coverage of the PC race. In fact, it’s MLAs, not party members, who hold that power, and those two groups do not always agree with each other.

In the past, this wasn’t an issue, because Canadian parties allowed the caucus to choose their leaders. This had the benefit of producing experienced leaders who, by definition, enjoyed the confidence of the caucus. But these “races” weren’t very exciting or democratic.

That started to change in 1919 when the Liberal party held the country’s first leadership convention, selecting William Lyon Mackenzie King as leader. Conventions are exciting and dramatic, so other parties soon started to follow suit. But conventions were not particularly democratic since they were generally dominated by party insiders. So the parties then turned to even more democratic leadership selection methods: the one-member, one-vote method employed by, for example, the Manitoba PC party in its recent race. One-member, one-vote races are very democratic and make it easy to entice people to join a party to have a say in the leadership race.

There’s one problem in particular with these leadership selection methods: you can end up with a party leader that has virtually no support in the party caucus. This can be, to put it mildly, problematic.

In 2000, for example, Alberta treasurer Stockwell Day was selected as leader of the Canadian Alliance, the predecessor party to the current Conservative party, by the party membership. The problem for Day was that the vast majority of the party caucus had supported former Reform party leader Preston Manning in the race. Day never received the enthusiastic support of Alliance MPs and a leadership crisis ensued with MPs speaking out against Day’s leadership and even defecting and forming a new party caucus. Day had secured the support of party members but not of the party caucus, and eventually this would be his undoing.

This is what could have come about if Glover had won the recent PC leadership race, given that virtually the entire PC caucus had pledged support for Stefanson.

If anything, the ongoing problems of the PC leadership race illuminate some of the contradictions in these OMOV leadership races. The question of who should become premier should not be left to hastily and questionably organized party races. I’d rather that MLAs made the choice themselves, especially since they are the ones with the final say anyway.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.