While the PC leadership race has already generated three investigations into alleged misdeeds, the party president says candidates need to raise the ethical bar to regain the lost trust that led to their dramatic punt from power last year.
The day after it was announced Jason Kenney would be fined $5,000 for showing up at the Edmonton-Ellerslie delegate selection meeting on Nov. 16, Katherine O’Neill said the selection rules were set to create an open and transparent leadership race.
“We lost on May 5, 2015 because people did not trust us. They perceived us as arrogant and we would do anything for power,” O’Neill told a news conference Monday.
“After that election, the membership took that to heart. If we’re going to rebuild, there has to be not just hitting the bar but raising the bar of expectations of how we conduct ourselves …That’s why these rules are in place, and we expect the candidates to follow them.”
Clashing opinions on clarity
Last Wednesday night, Kenney — who is running on a platform to dissolve the PC party and merge it with the Wildrose — arrived at the Mill Woods golf course where a delegate selection meeting was being held. A hospitality suite had been also been booked for his supporters.
The rules stipulate that no candidate can be near a room where such a meeting is taking place.
While Kenney has claimed the rules were “vague” and that his campaign “sought clarification,” O’Neill said no other candidate had any problems interpreting them. She said she was “disappointed” by Kenney’s comments that his team had been left without sufficient information.
Kenney was fined after the party’s board of directors accepted a recommendation from chief returning officer Rob Dunseith for Kenney to forfeit $5,000 of the $20,000 performance bond he put up for his leadership bid.
“[The Dunseith report] was very clear that the party did respond,” O’Neill said. “There was a written email. There was never a question at any time of, ‘Can we have a hospitality suite?’ or ‘Can the candidate come into the building?’ “
Four left in the race
The race currently includes Kenney, PC MLA Richard Starke, former PC cabinet minister Stephen Khan and Calgary lawyer Byron Nelson. Since the race officially started, an investigation has been launched into the treatment of former candidate Sandra Jansen at the party policy meeting earlier this month. Jansen, MLA for Calgary-North West, quit the leadership race before crossing the floor to join the NDP.
O’Neill confirmed there is also an investigation into a campaigning issue at the Spruce Grove-St. Albert delegate selection meeting. She characterized the alleged infraction as minor.
The leadership race involves having each constituency association select 15 delegates to send to a leadership convention in March. Eighty-seven associations are holding voting meetings in locations varying from church halls to multi-plexes. O’Neill said the intent was to hand out a strictly regimented voting protocol.
But, she said, the spirit of the rules should have been clear to all.
“When you set rules down, you expect people not just to follow them to the letter, but to the spirit.”