NATIONAL COUNCIL: A PERFORMANCE REVIEW (PART ONE)

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The 2024-2025 Nomination Process

National Council has failed to do its job in various important ways.  The most important is its failure to implement “rules and procedures to ensure fair and effective candidate recruitment and selection” (Constitution 8.7.2), in the context of its general responsibility for the  “governance, management and control of the activities of the Party” (7.6).   The 2024-2025 nomination process was in many ways neither fair nor effective.

1. Many EDAs across the country waiting to hold a nomination contest were denied that right.  Instead they had candidates imposed upon them by the Party.
2. Many of the nomination contests that were eventually sanctioned by the Party were held so close to the federal election that the winners had little time to organize an effective election campaign.
3. Along the way, numerous EDAs were denied the ability to interview certain nomination applicants on the basis of their application materials.
4. More generally, EDA recommendations either for or against nomination applicants were often ignored.
5. Many nomination applicants were treated very poorly throughout the process.

All of this created anger and disillusionment among long-term members across the country, leading in the first instance to the widespread disengagement from the 2025 federal campaign that played its own significant role in the Party's election loss.  And that anger and disillusionment is ongoing - very much to the detriment of the Party.

At the heart of the problem lies National Council's failure to "develop, implement, govern, manage, and control" -  to do its constitutionally-mandated job.

The Rights of the Membership 

But Council did not only disregard its own constitutional responsibilities.  It also disregarded the constitutional rights of the members who elected it.  For it declined to stand up for each EDA's right – as “the primary organization through which the rights of members are exercised” (5.1) – to administer its own candidate selection process (14.2).  And it also declined to insist on fairness for nomination applicants.  Click here to discover how this is not an isolated problem.