LILLEY: We shouldn't let underage non-citizens vote in party nominations

· Toronto Sun

Can we talk about the crazy way that we let our political parties select their candidates and leaders?

Over the weekend, the Ontario Liberal Party held a nomination race to select their candidate for the upcoming provincial byelection in Scarborough Southwest. Ahsanul Hafiz took 718 votes on the third ballot to defeat current Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith , who received 699 votes.

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This outcome shouldn’t shock anyone who was paying attention.

Erskine-Smith was perceived as the front-runner because he has a big profile, gets lots of media attention, and was endorsed last minute by Prime Minister Mark Carney. Why Carney would endorse Erskine-Smith and get involved in a messy nomination race is beyond me — he now wears part of this defeat.

Despite all of this, Erskine-Smith evokes a strong reaction among many Liberals who don’t like him and want to stop him from being leader of the Ontario Liberals.

On the flip side. Hafiz, the guy who actually won, has served as vice-president of the federal Liberal Party, has been involved in organizing local politics, and is a successful businessman. Folks call Hafiz “the pizza guy” for good reason — he owns about 30 Domino’s Pizza locations across Ontario, that’s a track record of delivering.

Ahead of the vote on Saturday, it was reported that Hafiz and fellow contender Qadira Jackson had come to an agreement that they would encourage each other’s supporters to rank the other as second choice. On Saturday afternoon, images were circulating on social media showing a slip of paper — a sample ballot in English and Bengali — showing people how to rank the candidates with Hafiz first and Jackson second, with no vote for the other two candidates.

This has led to a lot of discussion about ethnic voting blocs, and there is a lot to discuss there, but the crazy part no one is discussing is the part that the Ontario Liberals — and pretty much every other party — needs to address.

All parties let non-citizens vote

The Ontario Liberal Party lets non-citizens — even those who are underage — vote in their nomination and leadership races.

Before you get too upset about this being a Liberal issue, the Ontario PC Party , the Ontario New Democrats and the Green Party of Ontario all allow the same thing. To varying degrees, the same can be said for every major federal party in the House of Commons.

According to Elections Ontario, you must be 18 years of age, a Canadian citizen, and a resident of Ontario to be able to vote in a provincial election.

To vote in any nomination race, for any of the major provincial parties, there is no requirement to be a citizen or even a permanent resident. The Liberals, PCs and Greens require anyone voting to be at least 14, while the NDP will allow 13-year-olds to vote.

Shouldn’t it all be simple: To vote in a nomination race or a leadership race for a party, you should have to be able to vote in the provincial election.

What about the Hogue Commission lessons?

None of the parties — provincial or federal — have learned anything from the Hogue Commission into foreign interference. During that public inquiry, the commission heard evidence about Chinese students being bussed into the riding of Don Valley North in 2019 with instructions from the Chinese consulate to vote for Han Dong.

Dong has always denied knowing anything about this, but the evidence is clear that it did happen whether he knew or not.

“This incident makes clear the extent to which nomination contests can be gateways for foreign states who wish to interfere in our democratic process,” Commissioner Marie-Josee Hogue wrote .

I’m not alleging foreign interference in the Scarborough Southwest nomination race, but we shouldn’t need to wait for this to happen again to change the rules. Parties always want the rules on voting as loose as possible, if it suits them, and they all play into ethnic vote banking to try to win in certain ridings. Even if all the parties changed the rules to the same ones we use in a general election, that would still be happening.

What we can and should stop, though, is even the possibility that people who aren’t eligible to vote in general elections are choosing our next candidates or leader. If you want to vote, become a Canadian citizen, and wait until you turn 18.

Anything less is an attempt by the parties to abuse the system.

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