Sears | How the federal Liberals have opened their leadership race to foreign interference

Good reminder that more work needs to be done beyond reversing the most egregious rule. Implementation and vetting:

…But there is a much larger question here. National party executives and directors are not running the Oakville Seniors’ Lawn Bowling Club. They are the governors of organizations who control who gets to compete to be prime minister. The comparison to any other civil society organization is laughable given that power. They determine who leads our government, and have this time heavily tilted the scales.

The Liberals would have risen in public esteem if they were to have set membership as restricted to 18 year old citizens, who can prove they gave their own money to become a member. And if they had taken the admitted risk of setting a fairer campaign period — I suspect that the NDP could have encouraged not to defeat the government in return for the appropriate policy concession, for example.

Finally, they could have helped erase the memory of their unbelievably lax approach to foreign interference by creating a vetting process advised by a group knowledgeable about national security warning flags.

They chose to do none of these things.

So this race remains wide open to foreign interference and closed to any candidate who is not already a front-runner. This is a blow to Canadian democracy. It will be the most rushed and nontransparent process in the choice of leaders in recent Canadian history.

Source: Opinion | How the federal Liberals have opened their leadership race to foreign interference

Conservative MP Rempel Garner made similar critiques: https://michellerempelgarner.substack.com/p/integrity-questions-loom-over-pm