I’m looking forward to next weekend’s biennial Liberal convention, I really am. It will be great to catch up with Liberal friends from across the country, I have no doubt there will be some great suites that will go late into the night (which is exactly what my liver needs right now) and the gossip in the hallways (all from named Liberals, no less) should entertain if nothing else.
So I’m going, spending good money to attend and am actually excited about a trip to Ottawa in January – which is more than nothing.
But as of this morning, I think it’s fair to say the Liberal biennial is officially being overhyped. At least in certain political circles.
Which is different from saying nothing important is happening next weekend.
I think the election of the next president matters for the Liberal Party’s future, both for substantive as well as symbolic reasons. I will be casting my ballot for Mike Crawley and I strongly encourage any other Liberal delegate to do likewise. Mike’s message of bold change for the Liberal Party is exactly what is needed at this time. This has got to be about the future, not the past. I know Mike can make the bold changes the party needs happen.
I think electing Mike Crawley as president is important – in admittedly a very inside baseball kind of way.
But beyond that? First off the constitutional changes: Those massive, game-changey constitutional changes? Read Jeff Jedras’s wonderful summary of the proposed changes on his blog and tell me with a straight face these are worth hyperventilating over. Yes, there is the proposed leadership primary – I will get to that in a moment – but put that aside and what are you left with? It’s pronounced housekeeping.
Now, housekeeping is necessary. It’s good. Much debate will no doubt take place around the housekeeping. That’s what political parties do. The housekeeping items that pass will strengthen our party. But let’s not pretend it’s something else.
Ensuring every riding has an open nomination every election? That would have been a big change. No more appointments by the leader? Big change. That’s not what’s in the proposed constitutional changes in the end.
So ya, the primaries are getting lots of media hype. I’m mixed on them, which I know is a bit weird given that I was one of the first to publicly propose them. I want us to try out primaries in a riding or two. Do exactly what David Cameron did with the British Tories. I suggested starting with Toronto Danforth’s upcoming by-election. If it works – if it opens up the party and brings more people into the fold, and heck, maybe even helps win us a riding – then great, maybe then you elevate it to the leadership level. Or not.
But then the national executive jumped on the idea. Then the Interim Leader made it the showcase piece of how he’s “renewing” the party. Now we either support it for the selection of the next leader – untested, with hundreds of outstanding questions (where’s the “Iowa” of our primary? How much money will it cost the party to run this grand experiment? I could go on and on...) or the idea’s dead. Based on everything I’m hearing, it’s unlikely the proposal will get the requisite two-thirds of the vote to pass. I’m still very undecided how I will vote.
But even if the primary passes, it is far from as radical a change as people are making it out to be. Right now, it costs $10 or $20 to join the Liberal Party. In order to vote in a leadership vote, you need to sign up by a certain date. All of the voters in your riding vote for a candidate, each riding is weighted equally regardless of the number of votes cast, each candidate is given points in each riding based on the percentage of votes they got in that riding. The first candidate with 50% + 1 of the total points, wins.
