{"id":3184,"date":"2011-11-11T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3184"},"modified":"2011-11-11T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-11T19:00:00","slug":"a-roadmap-to-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3184","title":{"rendered":"A Roadmap to Renewal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Liberal Roadmap to Renewal has been released and can be read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liberal.ca\/newsroom\/blog\/roadmap-renewal\/\">here<\/a>. There are several <a href=\"http:\/\/beta.images.theglobeandmail.com\/archive\/01339\/Building_a_Modern__1339951a.pdf\">longer drafts<\/a> floating around I&#8217;ve put on my weekend reading list, but at 80-100 pages, I may just wait for the movie version.<\/p>\n<p>While the process feels a little too top-down for my liking, we&#8217;ve been <em>talking <\/em>about renewal for years so I&#8217;m glad <em>something <\/em>is being done and that members have concrete proposals before them to debate and vote on at January&#8217;s Biennial convention.<\/p>\n<p>As for the proposals themselves, some are unnecessary, some are flowery, and some skate around the real issues. Why we need to <em>affirm <\/em>the policy process is beyond me &#8211; I&#8217;d much rather see it reformed and made meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, there is some real meat in this document. The most visible and flashiest change would be moving leadership and nomination races to the primary-style system <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/11\/open-party.html\">I blogged about earlier this week<\/a>. This, coupled with the end of protected nominations for incumbents and the end of leader&#8217;s ability to appoint candidates would be a significant leap towards creating a more open and grassroots party.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t go into detail on some of the bookkeeping changes being discussed, because if I do you&#8217;ll never visit this blog again. It&#8217;s not exciting stuff, but I will say that the move towards streamlining and centralizing accounting, fundraising, and operations will save money. And <em>raise<\/em> money too, come to think of it.<\/p>\n<p>Fundraising to defend the new leader and buy more technology doesn&#8217;t require constitutional amendments, but those are worthy initiatives I&#8217;d be willing to open my chequebook for. The party needs to adopt a culture of data collection, so good on them for moving into the 21st Century.<\/p>\n<p>The document is rather quiet on what must be done to engage existing members, but those kind of initiatives don&#8217;t require constitutional change &#8211; just a willingness by people in positions of power to make things happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Liberal Roadmap to Renewal has been released and can be read here. There are several longer drafts floating around I&#8217;ve put on my weekend reading list, but at 80-100 pages, I may just wait for the movie version. While the process feels a little too top-down for my liking, we&#8217;ve been talking about renewal [&hellip;]<\/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":[546],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184"}],"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=3184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}