Regardless of the result of the 2021 Federal Election, one thing is certain—our political parties are continuing to drop the ball. This isn’t a matter of public policy or ideology, but rather one of competence. Throughout the campaign, there was no shortage of gaffes, flip-flops, and communication catastrophes. But one particular failure dogged all three of the biggest national parties, where each has had multiple candidates forced out over some issue that predated the dropping of the Writ. Quite simply, these are things that could have and should have been caught beforehand and either resulted in the candidate not running or, at a minimum, disclosing the pertinent information beforehand.
The Liberal campaign specifically faced issues regarding candidates being accused of sexual misconduct and assault. Incumbent Kitchener Centre MP Raj Saini, who has been in Parliament since 2015, had been accused of sexual misconduct relating to several staffers throughout his time in office, per the CBC’s reporting. After days of the story dominating political discourse, Team Trudeau dropped Saini with a $92,000 severance cheque. In Spadina-Fort York, Adam Vaughan’s retirement left the safe Liberal riding vacant, and the party tapped Kevin Vuong, a local Toronto entrepreneur and military reservist, to run. Five days before the election, the Toronto Star reported that Vuong was charged with sexual assault in 2019. Though the charges were later dropped, it appears that Vuong did not notify either his chain of command in the military or the Liberal party. Two days after the story broke, it was announced that he was no longer a Liberal candidate and would not be allowed to caucus with the Liberals if elected.
The Conservatives have also dropped several candidates during the election campaign. Earlier in the campaign, Dartmouth-Cole Harbour Conservative candidate Troy Myers was accused of sexual misconduct that took place at an event in 2019. The next day, it was announced that the party had dropped him as a candidate, and he ended his campaign. Similarly, Beaches-East York candidate Lisa Robinson was quickly dumped by the party after her Liberal opponent posted screenshots of bigoted tweets from an account allegedly belonging to Robinson. She protested that the tweets were not hers and that she previously reported the account to the police. Nonetheless, the party has followed through on severing ties with her, though she did not end her campaign in the riding.
Two NDP candidates both ‘resigned’ thus, suspending their campaigns following the discovery of tweets that were labelled as antisemitic. Cumberland-Colchester candidate Dan Osborne reportedly tweeted at Oprah in 2019, asking if Auschwitz was a real place. The candidate offered, as an explanation, that they were sixteen when they tweeted the message, they did not recall posting it, and that they did not intend to cause harm. In Toronto-St. Paul’s candidate, Sidney Coles, was reported to have posted misinformation linking Israel to missing COVID-19 vaccines. Both candidates were turfed by the NDP and “agreed to educate themselves further about antisemitism,” as party leader Jagmeet Singh made his opposition to antisemitism clear.
The common thread between all six candidates across the three parties is that what resulted in them being dropped as candidates predated their candidacies in the 44th Federal Election. The most recent appears to be Sidney Cole’s tweet in January 2021, while the oldest may likely be Raj Saini’s alleged sexual misconduct, which allegedly occurred during his time in office since 2015. None of these issues are ancient history and are instead recent enough that it’s surprising that they were not discovered amid the vetting process. During the 2019 Federal Election campaign, an infamous series of photos (and a video) of Justin Trudeau in blackface emerged. At the time, the most recent image was nearly two decades old and ultimately did not prevent Trudeau from keeping his position as both Liberal leader and Prime Minister. He admitted that he had omitted to tell Liberal party vetters about the blackface incidents before first running in 2008, though the vetters themselves clearly failed to find it. While it’s probable that the revelation of the photos or video in 2008, either to the party vetters by Trudeau or to the public by opposition parties, would have ended his Liberal candidacy for Parliament, that did not come to pass. Unlike the Prime Minister, the aforementioned six candidates were not fortunate enough to have their indiscretions not come up over the course of the election campaign. The Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP denied prior knowledge of what ultimately killed the candidates’ campaigns, hence why they were dropped. But why didn’t the parties know? What deficiencies in the vetting process let it get this far?
One thing to note: it may be said that certain cases of vetting fell through the cracks or didn’t occur properly because of the suddenness of the 44th federal election. While this is a legitimate point to raise, it falls well short for the two major parties. The Liberals, having been in government prior to the election, called the damn election. Excuses pertaining to timing simply don’t cut it coming from the party responsible for the timing in the first place. On the other hand, the Conservatives form the crux of the Official Opposition and had been fundraising off of an impending election threat for some time before the Writ was officially dropped. An election you expect is one that you ought to be prepared for, and vetting your candidates is a fundamental part of preparing for an election for precisely the reasons we’ve seen throughout the campaign. The New Democrats get something of a pass because they, both institutionally and financially, are simply not on par with the big two. When you’re that stretched for resources, it’s quite possible that you’ll win more votes by having Jagmeet become Tik-Tok famous or play games with Twitch streamers than by getting quality candidates in ridings where you’re going to get a distant second at best.
The question of who we, as Canadians, choose to represent us is an important one. It’s certainly a decision that entitles voters to all pertinent information, so I don’t see it as a bad thing when the skeletons in a few politician’s closets are exposed to sunlight for the first time in years. However, I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect political parties, as organizations geared towards winning elections and securing political power, to put in the work to ensure that when they ask us to vote for their candidates, the choices they provide us with really are the best they have to offer. The effort to find quality candidates across the country and sufficiently vet them may be significant but, it’s often nothing compared to the headache of unforced errors and PR nightmares that occur when the vetting is inadequate. It must be said that hundreds of candidates across all the major parties have campaigned without much controversy, which says something about the capacity of the parties to vet their candidates. However, the experiences of this campaign highlight the reality that there is still room for improvement, as there really is no good reason why a candidate’s baggage, whether it be alleged or confirmed, should dominate discourse to the detriment of policy.