{"id":3214,"date":"2012-01-06T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3214"},"modified":"2012-01-06T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T15:00:00","slug":"the-policy-policy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3214","title":{"rendered":"The Policy Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Next weekend, Liberals from across the country will head to Ottawa for the party&#8217;s Biennial convention. The <a href=\"http:\/\/convention.liberal.ca\/program\/\">full agenda<\/a> has been posted on the party&#8217;s website &#8211; among the highlights:<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<ul><\/p>\n<li><strong>Michael Ignatieff says thank you to Liberals<\/strong>: A nice gesture, which will spare us from what would have been an uncomfortable tribute to Ignatieff.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Critics Corner<\/strong>: This was billed as &#8220;a chance to talk to Liberal critics&#8221; which had me expecting a panel with Chantal Hebert, John Baird, and the Sun Editorial Board. Sadly, by &#8220;Liberal critics&#8221; they mean you get to ask Mark Eyking questions about International Cooperation. Still, could be fun.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Former Statscan head Munir Sheikh speaks<\/strong>: He will also be posing for photographs and signing Stats 101 textbooks.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Workshop on Leveraging Social Media<\/strong>: This will be a valuable workshop, since news stories can explode on social media. Take for example the kerfuffle over the Liberals&#8217; decision to not accredit bloggers to this convention, which received <a href=\"http:\/\/farnwide.blogspot.com\/2011\/12\/two-cents-on-blogger-accreditation.html\">gallons<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephentaylor.ca\/2011\/12\/lpc-blogger-issue-unresolved\/\">of<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2011\/12\/21\/jeff-jedras-ban-on-bloggers-gives-liberals-a-self-inflicted-black-eye\/\">virtual<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/scottdiatribe.canflag.com\/2011\/12\/21\/the-liberal-party-gives-the-finger-to-freelancers-and-non-delegate-bloggers\/\">ink<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/warrenkinsella.com\/2011\/12\/stupid-bloggers\/\">online<\/a>. I look forward to learning from the Liberal Party how to avoid social media faux pas like that.<\/li>\n<li><strong>National Executive Elections<\/strong>: The races for executive positions are hotly contested, and I&#8217;ll talk more about them next week. For now, feel free to browse my Q &amp; A with Presidential candidates <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/12\/meet-sheila-copps.html\">Sheila Copps<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/12\/meet-mike-crawley.html\">Mike Crawley<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/12\/meet-ron-hartling.html\">Ron Hartling<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/12\/meet-alexandra-mendes.html\">Alexandra Mendes<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, there will also be over thirty constitutional amendments to vote on. The flashiest of these is the suggestion to move to an open primary system &#8211; I&#8217;ll be voting in favour of this for the reasons I lay out <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/11\/open-party.html\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/11\/primary-debates.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>However, there are less sexy resolutions which could significantly reshape of the party. Electing one of the campaign co-chairs is an intriguing idea &#8211; so is voting on party officials and policy resolutions using WOMOV. You can read the full list of proposals <a href=\"http:\/\/convention.liberal.ca\/files\/2011\/12\/Constitutional_Amendments_2012_EN.pdf\">here<\/a> and Jeff Jedras&#8217; take <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/11\/open-party.html\">here<\/a>. I won&#8217;t weigh in on each and every resolution because I&#8217;m sure few are really interested in what I think about the appointment of a Chief Revenue Officer (my take: &#8220;<em>Chief Revenue Officer if necessary but not necessarily Chief Revenue Officer<\/em>&#8220;).<\/p>\n<p>However, I do want to take the time to <strong>speak out in favour of resolution 26, which would force the party to include at least three prioritized biennial policies in its platform<\/strong>. This is something I&#8217;ve advocated on behalf of for quite some time and I&#8217;m <em>ecstatic<\/em> to see this resolution up for debate.<\/p>\n<p>To provide some context, a wide range of policies proposed by Liberal Party members will be debated at this convention. No doubt, many Liberals feel strongly about these issues and spent a lot of time writing resolutions and convincing others to support them. I remember drafting policies when I first joined the party and arguing on behalf of them at my campus club, at the Alberta convention, and then at the national convention. We even made up t-shirts and pamphlets in support of our resolution. One of the reasons I joined the party was the make a difference and I saw the policy process as a great way to do that.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it doesn&#8217;t take long to realize that, much like the points on <em>Whose Line is it Anyways<\/em> or a Bloc Quebecois nomination meeting in Mount Royal, this really doesn&#8217;t matter. After months of debate and voting, the top policies are prioritized at convention&#8230;and then placed in a binder for the Platform Committee to ignore. I&#8217;d wager most are never even glanced at.<\/p>\n<p>What this amendment does is force the party to put at least 3 of the most popular policies in the platform. This would leave the Platform Committee some leeway if something politically toxic is passed (<em>Legalize prostitution! Invade the Turks and Caicos!<\/em>), but it would force them to take a <u>close look<\/u> at every prioritized policy. Policy workshops would be given <u>meaning<\/u>&#8230;under the current system, one&#8217;s convention time is far better served at D&#8217;Arcy McGees than debating policy.<\/p>\n<p>For anyone who gives a damn about the policy process, this resolution is long overdue. For those who don&#8217;t, I&#8217;d urge you to recognize that policy is a great way to recruit and engage members. And engaged members are far more likely to volunteer their time and money to the cause than those disillusioned over a hollow policy process.<\/p>\n<p>The fate of this resolution won&#8217;t garner any media attention this weekend, but passing it would be a major step on the Liberal Party&#8217;s road to renewal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Next weekend, Liberals from across the country will head to Ottawa for the party&#8217;s Biennial convention. The full agenda has been posted on the party&#8217;s website &#8211; among the highlights: Michael Ignatieff says thank you to Liberals: A nice gesture, which will spare us from what would have been an uncomfortable tribute to Ignatieff. Critics [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"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=3214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}