Candidate vetoed by the Liberals joins the NDP but so what?
What should we make of Shameela Shakeel’s decision to leave the Liberal Party and join the Newmarket-Aurora NDP? 
One moment she is the bright, new Parliamentary hopeful for the local Liberals, coasting towards the nomination and then a challenger, backed by former Liberal MPP Chris Ballard, appears out of nowhere. His unexpected arrival perplexes and disappoints Shakeel who tells Newmarket Today she would have preferred acclamation. She says she had spent months as the only prospective candidate.
Wrong candidate
Then, in a stunning reversal of her fortunes, the all-powerful Provincial Liberal HQ strikes her name off the list of approved nominees, declaring she no longer meets all the requirements to be a Liberal candidate. No reasons are given. Which requirements were not met? No-one speaks out publicly in her defence. Not even those timorous Liberals who initially supported her nomination. (Photo: Shameela Shakeel and her successful rival, Sylvain Roy)
Why didn't she stay to fight her corner inside the Liberal Party, demanding to know why she had been blackballed? Instead she meekly accepts the decision and decamps to a new home in the local NDP - as their campaign manager no less for the 2 June Provincial election. Seems to me she would have been more useful to the NDP if she had stayed inside the Liberal Party, rattling the bars of the cage and telling it as she sees it.
"Strong vetting"
This turn of events allows Newmarket-Aurora Provincial Liberal Association president Cathy Gapp to tell Newmarket Today that Shakeel’s defection to the NDP
“reinforces for me how strong the Liberal vetting process is.”
This is the same Cathy Gapp who persuaded Shakeel, a political neophyte, to make a pitch for the Liberal nomination in the first place.
Personally, I think this kind of cross-dressing encourages cynicism. People (unfairly) think all politicians – or aspiring politicians – are in it for themselves, changing their beliefs and their parties as often as they change their shirts.
Swapping parties is, of course, nothing new.
Winston Churchill
One of the most famous party-swappers was Winston Churchill who went from Conservative to Liberal to Independent to Constitutionalist and back again to Conservative.
Closer to home, in 2005 Newmarket-Aurora MP Belinda Stronach left the Conservatives to join Paul Martin’s Liberal Cabinet. In 2018 the Aurora Oak-Ridges-Richmond Hill MP Leona Alleslev left the Liberal Party to join the Conservatives. She lost her seat at the 2021 Federal election and, incredibly, is now running for leader of the Conservative Party. (She must figure this will give her a profile because she is not going to win.)
There is, of course, a long-standing convention that members of Parliament who change their allegiance are not obliged to resign their seats and fight a by-election under their new colours. MPs are regarded as representatives rather than delegates and between elections they are free to act according to their own beliefs.
Products of the Party system
These days, that seems to me very quaint. Our politicians are, almost universally, products of the Party system – vetted, approved and often selected by the central Party machine, and sometimes by the Party Leaders. True independents are few and far between.
Of course, we live in a free country and people can swap parties if they want to (and if their new party will have them).
But will Shameela Shakeel's defection to the NDP help their campaign?
I rather doubt it.
No-one will notice.
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Here in Newmarket-Aurora we shall see a candidate in June from the zany New Blue Party of Ontario, a spin-off from the Progressive Conservatives, founded by former Conservative MPP Belinda Karahalios and her husband Jim. She was removed from the Conservative caucus for voting against Bill 195 which kept various Covid-19 safeguards in place.
Update on 29 April 2022: From the Toronto Sun: Shameela Shakeel was a volunteer and is no longer part of the NDP team
Update on 30 April 2022: From Newmarket Today: NDP boots Shameela Shakeel
