On June 18, 2011, at 3:00pm EDT, delegates representing members from ridings across Canada will come together for an Extraordinary Convention to chart the Liberal Party’s course in the months ahead.
While the convention is taking place by teleconference, an audio stream is available on this page for Liberal members and the public to listen in. We also welcome comments in the livechat. Sign up for a reminder below!
Delegates: You will be called prior to 3:00 pm EDT at the phone number you provided on your Notice of Intent to Participate as a Delegate. Need help? Please call 1-866-574-5131.
AGENDA & AMENDMENTS
1. Introduction and welcome from the Convention Chair, Hon. Peter Milliken
2. Report from the Leader, Hon. Bob Rae
3. Report from the Convention Returning Officer, Beatrice Raffoul
4. Introduction of Constitutional Proposals and Sub Amendments 1,2,3
Main Constitutional Proposal 1 - Background from Hon. Lucienne Robillard
1. The members of the Party assembled in convention, as a Special Resolution, amend the Constitution to add as section 82(1) the following:
Notwithstanding anything else contained in this Constitution (including, but not limited to, section 54):
(a) the meeting of the National Board of Directors required by subsection 54(3) as a consequence of the resignation of the Leader in May 2011 shall be held at any time on or before October 1, 2012; and
(b) at the meeting referred to in Paragraph (a), the National Board of Directors, in consultation with the Caucus and the Council of Presidents and on five (5) months’ notice to the Party, shall set a date for a Leadership Vote between November 1, 2012 and February 28, 2013.
This subsection (1) shall no longer be of force or effect on the later of the conclusion of the Leadership Vote contemplated by Paragraph (a) and February 28, 2013.
Contradictory Sub-amendment 1
Moved by: Jeff Jedras, Scarborough-Centre
Proposed constitutional amendment 1 to be amended as follows:
1. in (a), strike “October 1, 2012” and replace with July 1, 2012
2. in (b), strike “November 1, 2012 and February 28, 2013” and replace with “September 1, 2012 and November 30, 2012”
3. in (b), strike “February 28, 2013” and replace with “November 30, 2012”
Contradictory Sub-amendment 2
Moved by: Gregg Guptill, Summerside, PE (Egmont)
That Amendment 1, proposed by the National Board and presented on the Party’s web site, to amend the Constitution by adding section 82(1), be amended as follows:
1. Paragraph (b) Substitute “June 30” for “February 28”
2. Last paragraph Substitute “June 30” for “February 28”
Contradictory Sub-amendment 3
Moved by: Taleeb Noormohamed, North Vancouver
Proposed constitutional amendment 1 be amended as follows:
1. in (a), strike “October 1, 2012” and replace with “February 1, 2013”
2. in (b), strike “November 1, 2012 and February 28, 2013” and replace with “March 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013”
3. in (b), strike “February 28, 2013” and replace with “June 30, 2013”
Proponents’ supporting detail: Rebuild First sub-amendment resolution and rationale
5. Debate
6. Voting
7. Introduction of Constitutional Proposals and Sub Amendments 4,5
Main Constitutional Proposal 2 - Background from Craig Munroe
2. The members of the Party assembled in convention, as a Special Resolution, amend the Constitution to add as section 82(2) the following:
Notwithstanding anything else contained in this Constitution (including, but not limited to, section 65), the next biennial convention of the Party (which is the rescheduled biennial convention of the Party originally called for June 17, 2011) including the related in-person meeting of the Council of Presidents shall be held on January 13 to 15, 2012 at Ottawa, Ontario. This subsection (2) shall no longer be of force or effect on January 15, 2012.
Sub-amendment 4
Moved by: Gregg Guptill, Summerside, PE (Egmont)
That Amendment 2, proposed by the National Board and presented on the Party’s web site, to amend the Constitution by adding section 82(2), be amended as follows:
1. Second last line: Substitute “between May 15 and June 30” for “on January 13 to 15”
2. Last line: Substitute “June 30” for “January 15”
Sub-amendment 5
Moved by: Gregg Guptill, Summerside, PE (Egmont)
That Amendment 2, proposed by the National Board and presented on the Party’s web site, to amend the Constitution by adding section 82(2), be amended as follows:
1. Second last line: Delete “at Ottawa, Ontario”
8. Debate
9. Voting
10. Conclusion
Hey everyone – check out the new liberal.ca grassroots website: http://www.liberal.ca/grassroots-website/. We encourage you to continue your discussion over there and hope that you may also provide us with some feedback so that we continue improving this platform. Thanks!
André
I’m responding here as a ‘test.’
Presuming this works, I suggest as follows:
1. Leave this page and conversation up until the IT team can migrate the conversation to a ‘TAB’ on the ‘latest page.’
2. SUSPEND this conversation until such time as it has been migrated.
3. Following migration, consider re-opening this conversation. Many of the points raised prior to June 27th are just as pertinent now as when they were made.
4. Here, I’ll not suggest how to re-organize this or any other conversation. Re-organization is required and I’m sure that will be done. The important point for now is … leave it up for more or less ‘permanent reference.’
Regards,
Gregg Guptill
First, in response to ‘why I am a Liberal’, thank you Gregg Guptill for passing on the highlight reel ‘Liberal history’. Like most Canadians I was born and raised in a land governed by Liberals. St. Laurent, Peason, Trudeau, Chretien, Martin and Dion are all important people to me, for specific reasons and experiences. Like most, I’ve adopted the Liberal-designed Canadian flag as a personal icon. The concern for families, justice, First Nations, shared prosperity via shared self responsibility and sacrifice – and Peace, in the Pearson tradition – all mark my attitudes and preferences.
Today, I am a Liberal because I chose this party as the means by which I can contribute the most to Canada’s continuing growth and prosperity, as a response to my fears of what the May 2nd election results warn us is about to happen. I joined to contribute to Canada, however ever since I have joined, I have been plagued by Liberal pleadings for more and more money. $20 to join; $20 to become a teleconvention delegate; adn today $100,000 for the ‘nest step’ of the Liberal vision. Here is my response to Mr. Rae and whoever else is so misguided in thsir reading of our collective concern and energy:
Here we go again…backwards…from ‘ready, fire, aim’ to even a more familiar theme, ‘wait, donate, trust us’…and you have the nerve to say things like ‘or as little as $25′! Really. In my view this is already off track and I feel sad and angry at how little you’ve heard and how exploitive you’re prepared to be since the real revolution began May 3rd.
Are you good enough to catch up to it? The ‘You’ being Mr. Rae, head office or the ‘old think’ folks who have so completely misunderstood the ideas, excitement and creativity that the last election has ignited across Canada. Please, don’t go down this road by mortgaging our souls, while promising nothing and doing even less. How political can you get? You’ve got it all BACKWARDS.
The revolution is underway. Don’t stop it by trying to get in front of it. Join it! The real people marching to Canada’s internet square are already in motion and they don’t need to give you $100,000 so you can figure out what to do. You say, ‘they’re just designs’; yes – designs to get our money while losing momentum in what is already working. And down the road, you promise a constituency level option on your page. How wonderful, how ironic: how sad!
This is not a ‘let’s rebuild the existing Liberal Party movement’. It is a let’s rebuild our nation movement, currently being offered via the Liberal Party by people who have been raised in a Liberal nation, by and large. Few people in this movement are concerned about the wellbeing of the caucus, the Party or the interim Leader. They are concerned about a nation that has taken a serious step away from the ‘home’ they have always taken pride in and whose priorities have always been community focused…not party focused…not Liberal focused. And now you want to stop them, in the name of YOUR best interests or strategic designs. Give me a break…
I’ll give you $50 out of ego, an effort to demonstrate I want to build WITH the right people and I am serious about my commitments. Past that, I fear you will chase me away with your ‘me first’ behaviour and your continuing miscues about where this movement is going. It is not your movement: it is ours!
Dale Partridge, Nanaimo Cowichan
I am a Liberal because I believe in the value of moderation and centrism: not as an unprincipled route to power, but as an ethic of open-mindedness and intellectual maturity.
I am a Liberal because I loathe the politics of loathing. Canadian political discourse has always been marked by partisan name-calling and ad hominem theatrics; but the especially ugly attacks on our last two leaders have caused me to worry not only about the character of the Canadian electorate, but also about the possibility of American-style “culture wars” in the coming years.
I can’t pretend to be a longstanding Liberal, or an insider. I’m a relative newcomer, having only served on my consitutency executive for a spell several years ago.
But I am a Liberal. It’s something I should have said, more often and more loudly, in the past — especially here in Alberta, where it isn’t cool to be a Liberal…and it should be.
Regarding Dale Partridge’s comments. How odd that Dale would imagine him/herself as “slow”! I would venture to say that if asked, most of the people on this blog would have trouble saying in one sentence why they are liberals. That is, what positive element in the Liberal Party makes us resonate with this Party over all others? We have already said we need to figure out what to do next. Why not use Dale Partridge’s comments to help us figure that out? No “glorious history”, no “fabulous moments”, nothing maudlin that turned us from one party to this one: just, “Why am I a Liberal, if I am?”
I’m willing to start, if you like. I’m a Liberal because the Liberal Party of Canada believes in doing “the greatest good for the greatest many”. I’m a Liberal because I believe in that too, and because I can see how easy it is to lose track of that fundamental principle, if people like me don’t keep saying it. In all the mish-mush of endless individual problems arising for the Party, it is hard to remember any single principle. The Party needs a collective conscience to keep on reminding itself that we are Liberals in order to do what we can to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people. As long as we keep on reminding ourselves of this, then vastly different problems are never really vastly different; they can all be solved the same way, by somehow finding what will help the most people the most. (Yes, I know the word “somehow” is the hard part. I didn’t say it would be easy to solve all these apparently different problems. But if you have a “yellow brick road” to follow, upon which all good solutions to all problems can be found, then we should follow the “yellow brick road”, shouldn’t we?)
What do you think about that, Dale? And the rest of you? Are lots of people still reading this blog? Or is it time now to separate out the several ideas that have come up, and doing something with them as that “What next?” part?
I have been a lifelong supporter of the Liberals and a huge fan of their vision for the country. But the recent results of last month’s election disheartened me but moved me to action by becoming an active member. However, I also realized that the current Liberal vision needs to change as the country has changed. As a former Quebec resident and huge supporter of Pierre Trudeau, his leadership and vision at that time was what this country needed. But countries evolve and Canada is no different. We need grassroots thinking in terms of providing thoughts and ideas to the executive which clearly lay out the Liberal vision for the next election. This is beginning as my own riding has started this process thanks to Dan McTeigue’s leadership.
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your comment about health care.
I agree with the PWC findings that we can improve access to health care services without spending more money.
I am working with thousands of international medical doctors, re-entry physicians and retired doctors who want transitional licenses in order to shorten patient waiting lists. This issue was raised during the recent televised leaders’ debate.
Unfortunately some health care professionals want more medical schools, teaching hospitals and private care. How can we prevent their view from directing the system?
For those who want to talk about policy…
Canada’s biggest expense is health care…
This report seemed like a good place to start:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/andre-picard/finally-a-health-care-paper-that-makes-sense/article2071521/
and
http://www.pwc.com/ca/en/healthcare/citizens-reference-panel-ontario-health-services-report.jhtml
Mr. App’s speech to the party earlier this month and Mr. Rae’s email today, have a few major themes in common: the assumption that people have recently joined (like me) or refreshed their interest to simply be involved with the rebuilding of the Liberal Party.
I did not. I joined to have direct candid discussions about Canada: the ideal Canada that I would like to commit my energies to creating (along side others whose vision I share). I did not join to worry about fund raising or membership drives, which of course are the mainstay of the party’s operation. I want to discover what I think while I hear what others think about the Canada that is available to us, if enough of us share its vision.
That does not mean I know or understand the ‘policy’ process, the convention rigors or the formalities of how the Liberal Party does things. I want to get in touch with people right here and in my constituency to commence these discussions and explorations.
Perhaps we need a special section on the rebuilding bus for ‘slow’ or ‘new’ people like me. A place where concepts and concerns are identified and discussed to the point of understanding, prior to conventions or campaign platforms or policy matters. My learning curve is perhaps too long for the process I find myself in here so I would love to hear if anyone else has the same instincts or priorities.
I am here to find out if I am indeed a Liberal. So far, I have little confidence that I am, based on the conversations because most of them do not resonate with my junior experience or my limited citizenship.
I highly recommend that all people reading this blogalso read (if you haven’t already) Alfred Apps’s Report of June 2011 before the Extraordinary Convention. He is an extraordinary writer (I am a professional writer and have made a living at it for more than 30 years and I would have been proud to have produced that document). Besides, we can all benefit from understanding the processes that occurred since May 3rd, which led to over a thousand suggestions from Liberals all over the country and eventually to the Extraordinary Convention. I would draw your attention particular to page 4, which brought up questions and some concerns or ideas in my mind:
(a) “for the long haul”: how long?
(b)”After churning through 4 leaders in 8 short years, many Liberals expressed resentment and fatigue over the cult and conflict of leadership which, many argued, has dominated our party and poisoned our culture for too long.” This is nice on paper, but in reality, many people are always going to be Canadidate A people or Candidate B people etc., though they might deny it on the surface. In order for the cult and conflict of leadership to cease poisoning our party, it is necessary for us to constantly shine a light into the dark corners where undemocratic actions and opinions lurk. How do we do that? The new National Executive will have to be given a new power, a kind of political audit function to mediate and mitigate the secret sniping and leaks and so on that have caused so much trouble over the years. The executive audit team (or whatever you want to call it) would be able to enforce the prevention of backstabbing by being given an open forum at every convention to speak about its findings and concerns. Naturally this brings forth the question “Who guards the guards?”, but trust has to start somewhere.
(c) “full-blown biennial convention”: this means every two years, doesn’t it? Every two years forever? Will this tire people out? Preparing for conventions? Running conventions? Using what we’ve learned from conventions to create policies that must be put into effect? Could we stop with the biennial conventions when once we have returned a Majority Liberal Party to government, using that as a sign that on the whole the Canadian people and the Liberals themselves have met on common ground at last, and simply convert to a convention every four years to keep us on track? I do believe that until then a Biennial Convention is essential to show other Canadians that we Liberals really are working at things, really are trying to find out how to do the most for the most in Canada. A Biennial Convention must be done in the open, not by blog, I’m afraid, because the LPC will have to show that it has the courage to put itself out there, naked, with lights shining on it, to prove to Canadians that instead of being idealogues with a bag full of answers we can pull out at random, that instead of that we are preparing ourselves always to ask the right questions at the right time in order to be ready to provide policy when it is needed.
(d) I have written in this blog before about the points Mr. Apps made on page 5 near the bottom, about how “the party” must “focus aggressively and especially on re-engaging women, youth, aboriginals, and new Canadians with very special and concerted attention to Quebec.” To summarize what I tried to say for those who haven’t seen it, we need not be “re-engagers” to appeal to the groups mentioned above. Look at “aboriginals”. What do you think of, seeing that word? One group of people? A whole lot of different groups of people, that do not live in the same kind of environments? Fairness to all? Seeking the commonality in their cultures and encouraging it? How to do that in our changing climate and their different environments? Fairness in jobs and payment? The True North, strong and free? Old values vs new? There is so much here that is in common with the issues of “new Canadians”. Can we find all the things that Quebec, new Canadians, aboriginals, and women have in common, as truly defining needs, without defining them as needs of those separate peoples? Who will we assign to find those commonalities? Then, what do we do to offer help to fulfil those common needs? If we can stop seeing every group as being separate from every other group, and focus instead on the commonalities, a Liberal platform can be devised that will appeal to huge numbers of people who have many things in common, only one of which is that they haven’t been too thrilled with the Liberals in the recent past.
(e) I want to thank Mr. Apps for the clarity of his writing, and the transparency of what he said. My only fear is that phrases like “historic national party base” that he used on page 7 are too dependent on the very issues that we are here and now trying to get rid of. We are trying to change. We need to become different. It doesn’t matter two hoots how good we were in the past. We are not what we were. It’s moving on up time, folks. No more “glorious past”.
There is a very strong image from native American tradition about a bow and arrow. It is of the person holding a bow. The strong bow arm holds the bow absolutely steadily; it doesn’t question its job; it doesn’t have to learn how to do it because it already knows how. That forearm is where we will be, when we are finally ready to do our jobs. The angle of the pulled bow-string comes from past training and past understanding of how to hit a given target. The arrow-point aims at the future. We must have all three dead-on, before we launch new initiatives.
Forgive the length of this, please. I hope what I said reaches some of you.