{"id":3224,"date":"2012-01-16T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3224"},"modified":"2012-01-16T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T15:00:00","slug":"the-road-to-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3224","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Renewal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, that was fun.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to come out of this weekend\u2019s Liberal Renewalfest in Ottawa without feeling good about the future. Considering the collective punch to the gut the Liberal Party took on May 2nd, it was remarkable to see Liberals out at this convention in such high numbers and such high spirits. And it wasn\u2019t the delusional \u201cget a new leader and we\u2019ll be back in power\u201d kind of optimism I\u2019ve seen at past conventions. Most Liberals I talked to this weekend got<\/em> that there aren\u2019t any quick fixes and there\u2019s a ton of work to do.<\/p>\n

Luckily, the party took a few concrete steps in that direction.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a big proponent<\/a> of shifting to an open supporter system for quite some time, but assumed the motion was heading for defeat this weekend. Surprisingly it passed, and the Liberals will open the party to Canadians when it comes time to select the next leader. I don\u2019t want to overhype the impact of this change – we\u2019re not going to have millions of people signing up as supporters tomorrow. But it opens the party to Canadians who are political <\/em>but not partisan <\/em>and will expand the Liberal tent.<\/p>\n

Also drawing headlines was Mike Crawley\u2019s 26-vote win over Sheila Copps for the presidency. It\u2019s incredibly unfair to Sheila and her supporters to describe her as the status quo candidate, but that was the media spin and Crawley\u2019s win will be seen as a vote for change. More substantively, the man has an incredible platform<\/a> and if half of it becomes reality, Liberal members will be more engaged than they\u2019ve ever been before.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t expect to be talking about policy resolutions in my convention recap. After all, the party hasn\u2019t even bothered to pay lip service to policies which are prioritized at convention. So when the legalized marijuana resolution passed with over 75% support, I figured it would be good for a few Twitter jokes and little else. Then in the closing address of the convention, Bob Rae did all but endorse it, specifically mentioning the resolution and saying \u201cthe war on drugs has failed\u201d. I\u2019m sceptical this will be in the 2015 platform, but I remember Paul Martin bluntly saying \u201cno way\u201d without skipping a beat when asked about controversial policies which had passed at the 2005 policy convention. A meaningful policy process is one of the best ways to turn new supporters into active members, so this new attitude is very much welcome.<\/p>\n

For me, that\u2019s really the take home message from this weekend: The new Liberal attitude. Who knows if going to a supporter system or electing campaign co-chairs will really make much difference? The key to rebuilding is to create an attitude of openness, inclusiveness, and engagement throughout the party – then keeping this in mind when making decisions. My sense from this convention is that for the first time since I became a member a decade ago, Liberals truly want to create a party like that and are willing to change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, that was fun. It\u2019s hard not to come out of this weekend\u2019s Liberal Renewalfest in Ottawa without feeling good about the future. Considering the collective punch to the gut the Liberal Party took on May 2nd, it was remarkable to see Liberals out at this convention in such high numbers and such high spirits. […]<\/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":[928],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-liberal-bienial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224","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=3224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}