By definition, more candidates lost than won in the last election. Having lost, these candidates tend to be discarded, or given little attention by their parties. Life goes on, and the winners rule.
Losers can attend party conventions every few years, where they are among many hundreds of other partisans. But, generally speaking, the special sacrifices they made as candidates, (sometimes over many, many months before the election), the time they spent knocking on doors, and the overall campaign effort they expended is forgotten. It is certainly not rewarded.
For every New Democrat MP who never showed in the riding, such as the young woman who ran a bar at Carleton University and turned up in Las Vegas, there were dozens who worked for weeks. For every Liberal who won, there were approximately nine candidates who lost, some of whom worked very hard before and during the campaign.
Parties should value their losers, instead of forgetting about them the day after the election. Why not keep them interested in the party, validate their contribution, and summon their commitment between elections by creating something we might call the Council of the Candidates for each party.
What would that mean? It would be a body in each party to meet, say, every year or two, (there could be regional meetings) to bring together all the candidates from the last election to provide intelligence to the parliamentary party and the leader, to discuss internal party or broad national issues, and to give the party a chance to keep involved those who had already demonstrated a desire to be active.
For a party such as the Conservatives, with more than half the seats in the Commons, such a council might be of limited importance. The Conservatives have MPs everywhere in Canada, except for large swaths of Quebec, so they can receive political intelligence from the existing MPs.
But for, say, the Liberals, such a council would keep interested and involved dozens of partisans whose efforts and advice are badly needed. After all, defeat reduced the Liberals to a corporal's guard in Parliament. As a result, the party's staffing and research budget will be cut. When the Conservatives eliminate public subsidies to parties, the Liberals will suffer badly.
So the Liberals, as the smallest major party, need all hands aboard their shrunken ship. A council of defeated candidates might keep some worthy, committed people involved in the party, show them that their efforts in the last election were appreciated, and, critically, provide the leadership with important feedback about how to rebuild, what's on the public's mind, and where the party should go. As a wise U.S. political hand once wrote, one of the forgotten lessons of politics is that people like to be asked.
The same sort of structure might be useful for the NDP which, after all, only represents about a third of the constituencies but has legitimate aspirations to spread its support to other parts of Canada.
Put matters upside down. Every election, especially one with big voter swings, brings to Parliament dud MPs (and good ones, too) and sweeps out some excellent ones. It wasn't the fault of many of the losing Liberal MPs that they were defeated; the political tides just ran strongly against them. With the best organized effort in the world, they were toast.
It wasn't the fault of New Democrats that they didn't win in New Brunswick or rural Western Canada, because the party is very weak in those parts. But the party needs input from those regions if it hopes to become a more national institution. Who better to provide it than former candidates?
There were good candidates and former MPs who lost. Those who want to stay active should be given a privileged place to do so, which is what a Council of the Candidates would provide. Ongoing participation would not guarantee a losing candidate the nomination.
Rather, it would provide those who had put themselves into the political ring a chance to feel that their efforts had not been completely in vain, even if the electorate preferred someone else.