Liberals’ free membership plan not the answer to boost abysmal party numbers: expert

[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses the Nova Scotia Liberal Party annual general meeting in Halifax on April 2, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan]

When Liberal Party members gather next month at the annual convention they will be asked whether to throw open the doors on membership, abolishing fees to essentially welcome anyone willing to hand over an email address.

The move is hailed by some as a democratization of the exclusive — and dwindling — club of party members.

But it also risks alienating those few Canadians willing to give their time and money to political participation, warns one expert.

The numbers of party members in Canada are “embarrassing,” says Robin Sears, a political commentator and consultant at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and a former party secretary to the federal NDP.

Free memberships may acquire a lot of new names, Sears says, but they will have a transitory, “if that,” commitment to the party.

“I don’t know what that achieves because it’s not a reliable gauge of interest; it’s not a reliable gauge of anything except that you’ve happened to catch somebody’s fleeting attention on Twitter one afternoon,” Sears tells Yahoo Canada News.

“By the same token I don’t think the Tories are in the right trajectory, either, in raising the cost of joining. That simply makes the case that unless you’re prepared to make a significant financial commitment then we’re not interested in you.”

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now the party’s national board are championing an end to membership, allowing anyone who has registered, for free, to participate in policy, nominations, leadership votes and conventions, the Conservative Party of Canada has moved toward tighter control of membership.

With a leadership race underway, the Tories have increased membership fees to $25 each and only members who have belonged to the party for at least six months will be able to cast a ballot in the leadership contest.

Meanwhile, the NDP has different approaches depending on region and province.

But all three suffer from the same abysmal level of interest.

Elections Canada does not require parties to report the number of members or the amount raised through membership fees separately, so there is no official tally of party membership.

A 2013 study by Statistics Canada found that just one per cent of Canadians reported being involved in a political party or group.

Sears cites another study that suggests less than one in every 600 Canadians is active in a political party. Those that are most likely white men of Western European ancestry nearing age 60, who give fewer than three hours a year of their time.

And it’s not just Canada.

Just over one per cent of British people are political party members.

“There are more members of the Caravan Club, or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, than of all Britain’s political parties put together,” warned an article by the BBC a few years ago.

The Economist has reported that Americans who identified themselves as “independents,” at 37 per cent, outnumbered both Democrats and Republicans.

“It’s not a problem limited to any one party. It’s a problem for all the parties in all the provinces,” Sears says.

There are many reasons for that, he says.

All institutional organizations, including churches and community groups, have seen similar declines in modern society.

And the parties have not suffered politically — yet — for failing to nurture their base, such as subsidizing participation in conventions like they used to.

“I think it also reflects a degree of cynicism and, in some cases like the [Donald] Trump voters in the United States, actual revulsion at the political elites,” Sears says, which is reflected in the declining voter turnout. “So, it’s ‘a pox on all their houses. We don’t want anything to do with any of you.’”

But eliminating membership is not the answer, Sears suggests.

Members are an important feedback loop for framing political objectives and strategy. They also, in a modern democracy, have a great deal of legal, financial and organizational responsibility, he says. It is they who supervise nomination and leadership processes.

“So for them not to have a large and empowered membership organization… would be a very serious mistake,” he says.

It may be difficult to do in the digital world of ever-shrinking attention spans but it’s important, he says.

“It would be a very bad circumstance to wake up in Canada and find that a Trump-like candidate was sweeping all of the established political parties because they were basically just hollow shells and they had no ability to motivate or mobilize voters themselves,” he says.

Sears says, despite the challenges, parties must find a way to engage voters to become involved. There must be benefits “beyond a tax receipt.”