Dakota Jeffery-Petts: Are Canadian interests still being served by our democracy?

Nate Erskine-Smith's defeat is another sign of electoral corruption at the hands of ethnic voting machines.

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s defeat in the Ontario Liberal Party’s nomination contest in Scarborough Southwest is a warning sign for both the Canadian state and the health of our democracy in the face of diaspora politics.

The long-time federal Liberal MP’s failed bid was marked by reports of unethical practices, such as sample ballots being distributed in Bengali, instructing voters to vote for Ahsanul Hafiz, a candidate of Bangladeshi origin who ultimately won the nomination contest.

It is worth noting that neither Canadian citizenship nor fluency in English or French is legally required to participate in internal party elections. This is not the first time that party elections in the Greater Toronto Area have been marred by non-citizen voters being effectively whipped up to vote for a specific candidate.

Erskine-Smith himself appeared incredulous after the results were announced, stating that he was embarking on a ‘full debrief’ with his team about the voting process. He went on to say that he had ‘never seen anything like it’. After a decade serving as a Toronto-area MP, Erskine-Smith was defeated by a man who had only moved to Scarborough Southwest the previous year and had no previous experience in elected politics.

More questions are now being raised about possible voter identity fraud.

A high-profile, sitting Member of Parliament lost in his own backyard after a blitz of mass, instant signups that are unencumbered by any meaningful price for membership, whether civic or financial. Diaspora-led activism is eroding Canadian sovereignty at its most fundamental level: namely, the ballot box.

For those of us who believe in a strong, sovereign Canada and a well-governed Ontario, this is about the integrity of our institutions themselves.

The displacement of an established Canadian legislator, as disagreeable as his beliefs may be to those on the right, by a candidate buoyed by concentrated, ethnic, community-specific mobilisation highlights a sovereignty gap. That gap is often tied to foreign political interests and, as many other instances have shown, foreign actors are all too happy to exploit it.

For full disclosure, I got my start in the political world volunteering for Mr Erskine-Smith back in 2015. I respected his honesty and consistency, and I still do, even though I despise a growing list of his views now.

But back then, 11 years ago, you could still trust our representatives to present themselves honestly and to earn the support of a broad constituency on the basis of national and local policy, no matter how disagreeable their views might have been. Canadians could operate under the assumption that the ‘grassroots’ were Canadian citizens concerned with Canadian outcomes.

Today, that model is being ruthlessly supplanted, not with grassroots activism, but with guided activism. The Scarborough Southwest nomination included thousands of memberships that were reportedly created, free of charge, in a matter of weeks. It suggests that our political parties have become open-source platforms for anyone to hack, including foreign proxies.

In Canada, the nomination process remains a glaring national security loophole. These contests are treated as private club matters rather than public democratic exercises. They lack the oversight of a neutral authority. This creates a low-cost, and at times entirely cost-free, environment providing a high-reward entry point for foreign interference.

All you need to do is speak sweet lies to members and constituents. In doing so, you create a motivated interest group that can effectively hand-pick a representative in a safe seat, bypassing the general electorate entirely.

When 3,580 memberships appear overnight in a single riding, we must ask: whose interests are being served? Are they Canadian interests, or diaspora interests?

The primary duty of an elected official, after all, is to the national and public interest. But when a candidate’s mandate is derived from a narrow, diaspora-specific recruitment drive, often centred on grievances or political movements from the old country, that candidate becomes a delegate for a foreign interest rather than a representative of Ontario and the Ontarians in that riding.

The result illustrates the danger of fragmented national and local loyalties.

Multiculturalism, when left without a strong framework of national identity, allows for the importation of foreign conflicts into our legislative halls. We are seeing the rise of a political class that views a seat in a Canadian legislature as a platform for foreign advocacy, rather than a tool for national or provincial governance.

This capture of our nomination process by diaspora activism is the ultimate sign of a hollowed-out democracy. If the gates to our legislatures are guarded by whoever can mobilise the largest bloc of unintegrated interests, then the concept of a Canadian mandate becomes meaningless.

We are effectively outsourcing our leadership selection to the highest bidder, or to the most aggressive foreign-aligned organiser. The decision by the Ontario Liberal Party to allow this surge, and the subsequent defeat of one of the more prominent politicians in the province, shows a party that has lost its way.

By prioritising raw numbers over the quality and loyalty of its candidates, the Ontario Liberals have signalled that they are comfortable being a vessel for proxies acting on behalf of foreign interests, despite the hardships facing so many Ontarians.

The fall of Nate Erskine-Smith is a wake-up call for every Canadian who believes that Canada’s future should be decided by Canadians, for Canadians. Our sovereignty is being auctioned off in community halls and pizza parlours. It is time to close the loophole before our legislatures become more of a collection of foreign outposts than they already are.

Dakota Jeffery-Petts is a former Conservative Party activist and lifelong resident of Toronto.