The rules are set and the candidates are ready: Your guide to the Conservative leadership race

OTTAWA—Patrick Brown’s official entry into the Conservative leadership contest on Sunday will add another candidate for the party’s third race in five years as it struggles to find a boss — and a direction — that it will bring it back to government.

But before they attempt to win over Canadians in a federal election, one candidate must first win over their fellow Conservatives. Who is able to enter the contest and how they might shape a path to victory is influenced by the race’s rules.

Here’s a look at what those rules are, and why they matter.

money

The first candidate to toss his hat in the ring is one of the party’s best fundraisers — Pierre Poilievre’s riding association raked in $119,711.32 in 2020. (By contrast, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s raised $10,987.60.)

Poilievre has also long been in demand on the party’s fundraiser circuit, regularly appearing alongside his caucus colleagues and election candidates to help them raise money themselves. That skill has helped him amass upwards of 40 endorsements for the leadership from his fellow Conservative MPs.

Off the top, candidates need to raise $300,000 to enter the contest.

In the Conservatives’ 2017 leadership race, the entry fee was just $100,000 and there were 13 names on the ballot. When the party tripled the entry fee for the 2020 contest, only four candidates made the cut.

It will take a lot of work to raise that money, said veteran campaigner Dan Robertson.

“It’s easier to get someone to sign a nomination form than it is to get them to write a check,” noted Robertson, who isn’t working for any of the candidates in this race.

Candidates can spend up to $7 million on their campaigns, an increase of $2 million from the last two races that the party pegs to the rising cost of, well, everything.

The party is also taking a bigger chunk of donations this time around — starting at 15 per cent of the first $1 million raised and rising to 25 per cent of any amount over $3 million. In 2020, the levy was a flat 10 per cent.

The party offers no apologies for that — the race costs money, said spokesman Cory Hann, and the organizing committee wants it to break even.

“It’s to ensure the new leader of the Conservative party is on the best financial footing possible, and maintains a state of election readiness during a minority Parliament,” Hann said.

The memberships

To register, each candidate must also have signatures from 500 party members in support of his or her nomination. Those signatures must be collected from 30 different riding associations spanning seven provinces or territories.

That number will change the playing field more than the entry fee, said long-time conservative campaigner Georganne Burke, who is also not working with any leadership campaign this time around.

At the start of the 2020 leadership race, Burke worked with MP Marilyn Gladu, who struggled to get the required 3,000 signatures and ultimately failed to qualify.

With a lower threshold this time, Burke believes that any prospective candidate who can raise the entry fee should also be able to get enough signatures.

She believes that puts the bar to entry at a fairer level, meaning even candidates with lower national profiles, like Ontario MPP Roman Baber, will be able to clear it.

Hann said the signature requirement was lowered after an analysis of the 2020 campaign. Candidates hit the threshold of 30 ridings in seven jurisdictions, but the need for so many signatures meant some campaigns were signing up new members for that purpose alone.

“It became a significant use of limited staff resources to verify that amount of signatures while not providing to be much of an organizational test of a leadership campaign,” Hann said.

So this time around, organizers kept the geographic requirement as a test of a candidate’s mettle, but lowered the count.

The process for membership sales has also changed — and if there’s a candidate everyone is watching on that score, it is Brown.

Rival campaigns said this week they expect his entry in the race to be a game-changer because of his organizational prowess and connections into tight-knit community and labor groups.

Brown out-hustled the front-runners during his successful run for leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, outselling them on new memberships by a wide margin.

One long-time party insider not connected to any of the campaigns told the Star they could easily see party membership cracking the 300,000 mark thanks to Brown. There are about 175,000 members now.

But the rules for the federal leadership campaign are far different than they were when Brown ran provincially.

For one thing, no cash membership sales are allowed.

Furthermore, the federal party has banned bulk membership sales, a process that previously allowed campaigns to sell memberships directly, collect the fees, and then cut the party’s headquarters a check before dropping off all the applications. Now, memberships can only be purchased individually and directly from the party, by credit card or check.

Burke said she never liked the bulk approach, which she believed was vulnerable to corruption. Even practically, she pointed out, having boxes and boxes of membership applications dropped off at the same time to party headquarters meant a delay in processing and verifying, and then getting the names onto the lists candidates need to win.

“I know it is probably more work for candidates, but boo hoo hoo,” she said.

“I like a grass-roots movement that is real.”

vote

Conservative leadership races are won on a points system. Each of the country’s 338 ridings are allocated 100 points; in order to win, a candidate must get 50 cent plus one of the total.

In past leadership races, how many points a candidate received from a riding rested on their share of the vote. So, say a riding association had just four members, and all four voted for the same candidate. That candidate would get all 100 points. But the same held true if everyone in a 4,000-member riding association voted for the same candidate — just 100 points.

The party changed that rule at its last convention. Now, if a riding has fewer than 100 members, it’s only one point per vote.

This change matters the most in Québec. It has traditionally had the smallest membership base in the country, which often gave its ridings outsized weight in the vote count.

Quebec is also the home of Jean Charest, the former premier and federal cabinet minister, who launched his leadership campaign last week in Calgary.

“The assumption is reasonable that Jean Charest will do well in Quebec, where memberships in a lot of ridings are not that high, but he will not benefit from that in the same way Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer did,” Robertson said.

The party also uses ranked ballots, on which members get to rate the candidates in their order of preference. If there is no clear winner on the first ballot, the candidate with the lowest number of votes gets dropped, and the points count is recalibrated using the second choices of his or her supporters.

Charest and Brown, who have known each other for decades, are likely to have a similar pool of support, and it is likely each will seek to woo the other’s voters to rank them as number two.

How that dynamic shapes up for at least one other candidate is less clear.

At the outset, Leslyn Lewis is the only candidate in the race with the explicit support of social conservative groups. Which other candidate she could count on for second-place votes remains an unknown, just as it’s not clear where her supporters of her might go if she drops off the ballot.

The wild cards

There are also unknowns. Former Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay has yet to decide whether he’ll enter the race but continues to think about it. A newcomer to the federal scene, lawyer Joel Etienne is considering a run. Two-term MP Scott Aitchison is expected to launch his campaign in the coming days, and former MP Leona Alleslev is thinking it over as well.

And while some candidates are in to win, some jump in for other reasons, Robertson noted — to raise their profiles, to jockey for seats in the next cabinet, or just to be part of the conversation.

“But I’ve learned over 30 years that, deep down, most candidates think they can win,” he added, “however hopeless it may seem.”