BY PAUL CRANT
GUEST OPINION
I was president of the District 15 West-Royalty-Springvale Liberal Association from Nov. 2013 until Jan. 25, 2018, except when I took a leave of absence to manage MLA Bush Dumville’s 2015 nomination campaign and the District 15 election campaign in 2015.
I am writing over some concerns regarding the founding meeting of the new District 15 Brackley-Hunter River a few weeks ago.
With the change in the electoral boundaries recently, the Liberal Party of P.E.I. is setting up founding meetings for the new districts. Many of the MLAs would be involved in the founding of the new districts, keeping people informed and trying to make sure there is a good district executive in place. There were substantial changes in the boundaries of many of the districts. The new District 15 is an amalgamation of three previous districts, including districts 9, 15 and 18.
Dumville called many Liberals in the new district to see if they would serve on the new district executive. Meetings were held to firm up who would serve in what position. A person finally came forward willing to serve as president. The potential nominee was a very well qualified candidate who had held the position of district president in District 23 previously, and had a long history of being a Liberal Party volunteer. This nominee had only known Bush for about two months at the time of the founding meeting. I would not characterize this person as a Bush Dumville supporter, and I believe he would have been a good and fair president.
One day prior to the founding meeting, on Jan. 23, a senior member of the Liberal Party told me that “the party is going to run a president off the floor at the founding meeting.”
At the founding meeting, my role was to verify that the people entering the meeting were Liberal members of the new District 15. I was given two sets of membership lists and was told that if someone was not on one of the lists, they could not vote. I should have been given three membership lists (of Districts 9, 15 and 18). There were at least 15-20 people who came to the meeting who were not on any of the lists I had. I recorded their names and addresses to allow them to vote. I had no way of confirming whether everyone who entered the hall was a Liberal member or not and whether they should be allowed to vote. I did not ask for identification to confirm that their addresses were in the new district. Based on my quick perusal of the addresses that I had recorded, it appeared to me that many of the addresses were from the old District 9 portion of the new district. The MLA representing the old District 9 is Premier Wade MacLauchlan. This founding meeting had about 75 people in attendance when a normal meeting of this type would have a lot less. Sometimes for annual general meetings, it is hard to get a quorum of 15. At the founding meeting, another candidate for president allowed his name to stand.
Roger Ford, a long time Liberal Party volunteer who has a contract with the P.E.I. Liquor Commission to haul alcohol, put his name forward. Ford had the most votes for president that night, but there were so many names not on the party-provided membership lists that the veracity of the vote is in question.
I believe that the leadership of the Liberal Party of P.E.I. was managing the outcome of this district executive election, based on what I had heard the day before. This perceived interference in District 15 politics is not new, based on my experiences with the nomination campaign in 2015. At the beginning of that nomination period, as district president, I received a phone call from Windsor Wight stating that he was seeking the nomination in District 15. He told me that two senior people in the Liberal Party came to see him to ask him to run for the nomination 15. When I asked who, he would not say.
While I believe every party has the right to recruit candidates, it is very unusual for a political party to recruit candidates to challenge an incumbent. What happened at the founding meeting of the new District 15 was nothing more than an extension of what happened during the nomination challenge in 2015 – to push Bush Dumville out. I believe the events surrounding the founding meeting were the first step to challenge Bush in the coming nomination before for the next election. Any MLA would choose to sit an independent under such circumstances. I also do not believe this will be the only event of this nature in the upcoming nomination period before the next election. The party made it clear with the last cabinet shuffle what team they want to enter the next election with.
- Paul Crant was the president of the District 15 West Royalty-Springvale Liberal Association from Nov. 2013 until Jan. 25, 2018
