{"id":2242,"date":"2009-04-28T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-29T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2242"},"modified":"2009-04-28T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-29T02:00:00","slug":"talking-to-john-lennard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2242","title":{"rendered":"Talking to John Lennard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Why should young Liberals vote for John Lennard<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a question of building the Liberal Party. I think the Liberal Party is desperate for change, for growth, for rebuilding. I think young Liberals need to be a part of that – I\u2019ve got a couple of ideas, and a lot of passion for that.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s very important that young Liberals become the leaders of today in terms of moving the party forward. That\u2019s why I\u2019m running. I think I can do that better than anyone else, and we\u2019ll see what the delegates have to say in Vancouver.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the best way to get young Liberals to become leaders of the party?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the YLC\u2019s job fundamentally is to become a link between our core constituency, which is young Canadians, and the party itself. That means young Canadians need to take on leadership roles within the party.<\/p>\n

I personally was a campaign manager at the age of 20 and 21. I think the YLC\u2019s job is to foster that kind of engamenet.<\/p>\n

The hot topic of the convention seems to be one member one vote. I\u2019ve seen your comments on blogs, so and you\u2019re obviously getting mixed up in all that. I see you support one member one vote \u2013 are you for or against the youth amendment that would set a 25% quota on the points?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m against the YLC amendment. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s productive for the party.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a very defensive measure to try and defend a small piece of the pie, a bit of the turf, rather than thinking about what\u2019s in the best interests of the party. And the best interests of the party as far as I\u2019m concerned is making sure every single member gets a direct say in the choice in the next leader.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s divisive as well. I think it creates a gulf between the youth of the party and the rest of the party. I think it\u2019s time to stop treating ourselves as young Liberals as though we\u2019re some sort of junior partners.<\/p>\n

Finally, I think it sends a pessimistic message, that it allows us to think young Liberals can\u2019t do more…that we need some sort of booster seat or training wheels to go where we want to.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m with you on that. But, just to play devil\u2019s advocate, isn\u2019t the role of the YLC President to look out for the interests of youth? So shouldn\u2019t the YLC be protecting the gains they\u2019ve made in the past? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the role of the YLC is to grow the party and bring more young people into the party. It\u2019s not about protecting our piece of the pie \u2013 it\u2019s making sure our voices are heard louder by bringing more people into the party.<\/p>\n

My push as President of the YLC is going to be to bring more people into the party and make sure their voice is heard all the way up.<\/p>\n

So, talking about the role of the YLC. Looking at the big picture, young voters don\u2019t seem to be voting Liberal, the Liberal Party hasn\u2019t had more youth candidates or elected more younger MPs than other parties. So, in that context, do you think the YLC serves a useful purpose for the party?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think we need to get our organization away from a lot of the internal trying to defend our turf, or protected ourselves against the \u201csenior party\u201d. We want to bring people in, take a senior role in the party, have people run for MPs, have more young Liberal riding presidents – we have a 25 member national executive and there\u2019s only one young Liberal on it outside of the YLC president. We need to get ourselves organized and start thinking big.<\/p>\n

I get all these campaign e-mails and I saw you had an endorsement from Simon Begin, a former Quebec Young Liberal President who supported the Conservatives last year. In his endorsement, he seemed hostile towards the Liberal Party\u2019s traditional position vis-\u00e0-vis Quebec, saying \u201cthe Liberal Party of Canada has never really made a point of opening itself to Quebec while in power\u201d and \u201cthe abuse of power of some centralizing federalists contributed to the distorted Liberal Party\u2019s image\u201d. I know you\u2019re at McGill so you obviously have a sense of Quebec \u2013 is that kind of your view of the province?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My opinion has shifted a bit since I\u2019ve lived here over the past few years. I think it\u2019s important for people to recognize Quebec\u2019s distinctiveness.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very happy to have Simon\u2019s endorsement. The key is building the young liberal organization, so that means relying on connections we have to other provincial parties that share our philosophy, our general philosophy. In Quebec, in particular, there\u2019s a huge organization of young Liberals there that are untapped.<\/p>\n

See also – John Lennard interviews with Scott Tribe<\/a> and Jeff Jedras<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why should young Liberals vote for John Lennard? I think it\u2019s a question of building the Liberal Party. I think the Liberal Party is desperate for change, for growth, for rebuilding. I think young Liberals need to be a part of that – I\u2019ve got a couple of ideas, and a lot of passion for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[568],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}