Angry in the Great White North

Bob Rae insists that the Liberal Party plan to hand the leadership of the party to Michael Ignatieff would be a big mistake:

In light of the opportunity to defeat the Harper government and replace it with a new government of national economic unity, it is clearly now time to bring the leadership selection process to an earlier resolution. We need our new permanent leader in place by the time the House returns to debate the Conservative budget on January 26th, 2009.

This obviously means we need a different selection process from the one that was put in place to lead us to a Convention in May. Press reports have some suggesting that the entire leadership process should be replaced with a single, secret vote to be held in a closed meeting of the 76 MPs, next week. I think this is the wrong thing for our Party.

The party Executive is working on a viable, timely, cost-effective and constitutional means of enabling a one-member-one-vote democratic leadership selection. This can be in place swiftly, and you can make your voice heard in the selection of your Leader. I believe that ordinary Liberal volunteers must have a direct say in choosing the new Leader. That's the only way to go.

So what can Bob Rae do?  According to the Liberal Party constitution, complaints about the leadership selection process can be heard by the Permanent Appeal Committee:

The Permanent Appeal Committee is responsible for:

(a) adjudicating appeals arising in relation to candidate nominations, leadership selection and delegate selection to any convention of the Party;

The constitution doesn't seem to set timeframes for the PAC to render a decision.  Note too that the PAC has no jurisdiction over the caucus, so the right of the caucus to vote for a leader cannot be reviewed by the PAC.  But the PAC can still decide that the process has an illegal result, since leaders can only be chosen by delegates representing all riding associations:

The Leader is elected at a National Leadership Convention with the delegates to that convention being elected in proportion to the popular direct vote received by each leadership contestant in accordance with this Constitution and the Party Bylaws.

Or maybe the PAC won't come to that conclusion.  Who knows?

But it would represent Bob Rae's last chance within the party structure.  I suppose he could sue, arguing his employer is not living up to its side of an employment agreement, but that seems like a stretch.

Nah, the PAC is the only fallback position, short of leading a messy public revolt against the majority of the Liberal Party.