OTTAWA — Can a political party have too much democracy? There are some Tories who think so.

He won by only 161 votes. But 29-year-old Robert Ghiz, son of the late premier Joe Ghiz, is the new leader of the PEI Liberal Party.

Some pundits say he won because he recruited hundreds of "instant Liberals." Many were youth delegates, some as young as 14, to vote for him at yesterday's convention in Charlottetown. He did, they did and he won. Because they were, even at 14, bona fide grass roots Liberals.

And when it comes to political leadership these days, winning the grass roots is what it is all about.

Not long ago, party insiders held much of the power in leadership races. But that's changing, and this move to more democracy has some Tories worried they're about to lose their party to an "outsider."

Party leaders used to be chosen at huge national conventions, which were like a freewheeling, wide-open political bazaar.

No longer. More and more, leadership is being decided in high school gyms and church basements, and it has got much of the Canadian political establishment worried.

When Joe Clark first won the PC leadership back in 1976, it came as a result of a deal made on the convention floor.

In essence the deal was this: After the first ballot results were announced, all of the so-called "red Tories" -- Joe Clark, Flora MacDonald, John Fraser, Heward Grafftey and Sinclair Stevens, etc. -- would come together and throw their support to whomever of their number was leading.

The idea was to focus the fight between left and right and create momentum on the floor. They saw it as the best way of heading off one of the "blue Tories" -- Quebec's former Liberal Justice Minister Claude Wagner or former federal Liberal minister Paul Hellyer. Hellyer had joined the PCs because he couldn't stand Pierre Trudeau, against whom he had run at the Liberal convention in 1968.

The strategy worked. Clark zoomed ahead of both Hellyer and the un-elected newcomer Brian Mulroney.

On the final ballot it was the relatively unknown Clark against Wagner on the final ballot and as we know, Joe won. Thus the headline: Joe Who?

All of the parties had somewhat similar experiences. Losing candidates traded their support in an effort to influence the final outcome, and retain bargaining power in the years to come.

The arrival of the populist Reform Party changed all that.

Power flowed out of the backrooms to the grass roots. Local party members threw out the kingmakers. It was one member, one vote.

That started a trend, and now, all of the parties have a system roughly based on one member, one vote.

Now the name of the game is to sign up as many new party members as you can.

That's what happened Saturday at the PEI Liberal convention in Charlottetown, and it is what's going on this week in the race for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party.

At this point, Nova Scotia MP Peter MacKay leads the pack, but while he's running hard, he's not certain of winning.

That's because of the surprisingly strong showing by Saskatchewan organic farmer David Orchard.

Orchard isn't a Member of Parliament, and he doesn't have Peter MacKay's profile. But he ran second to Joe Clark in the last leadership race, and he's been selling PC memberships non-stop ever since. If his sales team is as good as some Tories believe it is; Orchard could end up being the new Tory leader.

The PC party establishment fears Orchard, who is opposed to the war in Iraq, fought against Free Trade, and who sounds a lot like a New Democrat (he denies it) will alienate the party's traditional base, and put the PC party out of business.

The next seven days are critical. More than half the delegates to the Tory convention will be elected by the end of this week.

We'll have a good idea by then if the PCs -- Canada's first political party, the party of Sir John A; is about to be moved in a radical new direction.