Dear Editor

Re: Provincial PCs, not local members, appointed candidate (25th February 2022)

At first I was surprised, then not. Initially I thought that a political party participating in a democracy would use its traditional democratic process to “elect” its candidate thereby “walking the talk”.

That the local Progressive Conservative party was not allowed, nor, it appears, consulted, in picking its candidate, and was, as Dave Carr stated, "a major loss of democracy".

That the president of the BGOS PC Riding Association would “rubber-stamp” the process and candidate was no surprise, either. What could he say?? (Although the Chair of the candidate selection committee of the Simcoe-Grey PC Riding Asociation resigned over the decision to appoint a candidate there without a nomination.)  I truly hope that behind closed doors the local riding association condemned the provincial office’s actions, at least within its own discussions.

But over the years I have learnt that political parties mostly behave badly when it comes to their internal actions even though they may conflict with their public face and the hypocrisy of slings and arrows directed to other parties behaving badly.

Disclosure: I do not affiliate with any one political party.

Sincerely,

David Clark, Owen Sound