OTTAWA — A key principle that sealed the merger between the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance was never meant to be a permanent party rule, says one of the party's founding figures.
Ontario MP Scott Reid, one of the Alliance negotiators during merger talks in 2003, wrote to party members over the long weekend about a change he would like to see in the Conservative party constitution.
Such changes will be discussed at the party convention next month and could fuel a passionate rule fight on the floor, as it has in previous years.
Reid wants to alter the formula that gives all riding associations an equal say in a leadership vote, regardless of how many members they have. Reid would like to see larger associations get more clout — something Progressive Conservatives balked at in 2003 for fear that the mostly western-based Alliance would swamp the ballot.
Reid points to the text of the 2003 merger agreement between the parties that referred to a "one-time process for leadership selection" before the race that saw Stephen Harper elected.
"So a change to a new system is entirely in the spirit of the agreement signed by Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay and the issue of how the party would select its second and subsequent leaders was never a deal-breaker," Reid wrote in a letter obtained by The Canadian Press.
That directly contradicts Defence Minister Peter MacKay's letter to members written only a few days earlier.
"The equality of (riding associations) was a crucial, 'deal-breaker' issue in the merger of our legacy parties in 2003," wrote MacKay. "Equality . . . has allowed us to elect our leader with a cross-country base of support, develop as a truly national party, and this in turn has enabled us to form a truly national, majority government. . . .
"This is a divisive debate our party does not need to have again, having rejected similar proposals in our founding agreement and at two national conventions."
Conservative Senator Hugh Segal agreed and saluted Harper for defending the rule in the past.
"Retroactive efforts to change the core '03 agreement are not in the interest of a strong party, however well intentioned, the proposer may be," Segal said in an email to The Canadian Press.
"Smaller Tory riding associations in less populous parts of Canada, in rural areas, the Atlantic and Maritime regions, not to mention Quebec or the North, should not be discouraged or diminished as the proposed changes would make unavoidable.
"Fussing with an eight-year-old agreement every few years is counterproductive."
Some Quebec Tories who spoke to The Canadian Press said they were completely against changing the rule at a time when the party needs to rebuild in the province. Quebec riding associations generally do not have the same numbers of members as those in other parts of the country.
"I'm against it for the simple reason that fundamentally, if there is a riding that has 100,000 voters while another has 45,000 voters, the chances of having the same number of party members is completely unrealistic," said Jean-Nicolas Marchand, president of the Louis Saint-Laurent Conservative association.
"Right from the outset it's inequitable because all ridings in Canada don't have the same number of people."
Reid is not the only Conservative pushing for a change to the equality-of-ridings principle. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's Calgary riding has its own proposal, as do others from British Columbia.
Under the current system, riding associations have 100 points to allocate in a leadership vote. The points are awarded to each contender based on the percentage of party members in each riding who cast ballots for one person or another. A riding association with a few dozen members gets to send the same number of points to a leadership contestant as a riding with thousands of members.
Reid complained in his letter that a majority of party members could cast ballots for a particular candidate, but see someone else win because of the equality rule.
"And this is the whole point of suggesting a new leadership election formula," Reid said. "I think it's obvious that if Candidate A wins the leadership of a party when Candidate B has won twice as many votes, the victory will be seen as illegitimate and the party will be unable to function," Reid said.
Reid also rejected the notion that the party is "divided into factions based upon our prior partisan allegiances."
He did not return calls made to his office last week and on Tuesday.