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Showing posts with label Liberal Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberal Party. Show all posts
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
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| Martha Hall Findlay |
I wish to go on record that I would support Martha Hall Findlay for Liberal Party president, should she run / be drafted / be persuaded to run.
Findlay has paid her dues in the trenches, and would add youth, experience and vigour to the post of party president. Unlike the current occupant, I would expect Findlay to pay close attention to the failed communications process that the party has suffered under in recent years, and shove the office of President into a far more democratic mode.
I would also expect her to push for a substantial revision of the creaking party machinery, designed to allow party members to actually become part of discussions, provide suggestions, and vote on most important matters.
I would also expect her to introduce a far more advanced electronic system into the party, which would achieve some of the above ends, and also address the financial disaster awaiting the party now that the public funding is being phased out.
Why not throw your hat into the ring, Martha?
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Liberals have just had a successful teleconferencing convention that 2,700 members of the party subscribed to, and 2,100 members voted to extend the date a permanent leader is to be chosen.
In commenting on the task facing us, Bob Rae had this to say:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MORELiberals, he said, have to fight back by rebuilding the party, root and branch, and that will take time. While he did not express a preference for any precise date, Mr. Rae urged delegates to defer a leadership vote and give the party time pull itself up off the mat.
Monday, 6 June 2011
On May 25 Bob Rae became interim Leader of the Liberal Party, after a few weeks of speculation that the job would be his. On May 2 the surprising election was held, reducing the Liberals to a mere 18.9% of the votes cast, which sank a few weeks later to below 16%.
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| Bobby Bounce? |
Between May 24 and 29 Nanos had a poll, which shows, in the Cat's belief, the first sign of the Bobby Bounce for the Liberals: up from 18.9% nationally to 21.5%, with
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Wednesday, 25 May 2011
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| Separatism Redux |
The centre of gravity of the NDP has shifted to the two largest provinces – Ontario and Quebec. In a sense, having ousted the Bloc Quebecois from power in Ottawa, the NDP under Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair has also done a bit of a time-shift, back to the turbulent 70's and 80's, when the burning question in Canada was whether it would stay united, or end up with some form of federal system between an independent Quebec and the ROC.
The Cat has thoughtfully provided a redesigned NDP logo which more correctly represents the 'new' New Democratic Party's centres of gravity, for consideration by Jack and his large Caucus.
The NDP has straddled the Quebec independence issue for years, and succeeded in getting away with it because it really did not play a meaningful role in that province.
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Congratulations to Bob Rae for being chosen as Interim Leader by the Caucus, and congratulations to the Caucus for choosing him:
Bob Rae was crowned interim leader of the Liberals on Wednesday and handed the daunting task of breathing new life into a party that recently suffered the worst electoral drubbing in its history.The party's national executive is expected to rubber stamp the selection of Rae as caretaker until a full-time leader is chosen. A decision on that will be made next month, but the party doesn't want a leadership race to start until as late as February 2013.
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Monday, 23 May 2011
Ipsos is predicting that Harper's "values-based national coalition" of Tories might have a brighter future than the cobbled-together Mulroney coalition had:
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| Darrel Bricker of Ipsos |
The interesting thing about what happened in this (May 2) election . . . is that they actually put together a values-based national coalition of Tories — the first time we’ve had it in this country,” Bricker said ...
Bricker says Mulroney's coalition of out-groups was based on two poles of disaffection: the West (miffed by the NEP) and those Quebeckers annoyed by Trudeau's repatriation of the Constitution. Harper's party has these values:
He rattled off the typical values of a Harper Conservative voter: “smaller government, law and order, pro-military, pro-trade, pro-U.S., economically focused and fiscally prudent.”
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Sunday, 22 May 2011
Renewal starts on the ground, and if we wish to implement a 308-riding strategy, we need to adopt and implement the recommendations of the Change Commission Report April 2009.
One key recommendation we need to focus on is providing assistance to the Electoral Distric Associations (EDA), because that is where the rubber hits the road.
The Change Commission made these recommendations regarding steps to make it
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Friday, 20 May 2011
This is incredible: some unnamed MPs or Senators seem to think that one candidate for the Interim Leadership should renounce any right to run for permanent leader EVEN IF THE NATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND THE CAUCUS OF SENATORS AND MPS DECIDES IN FUTURE THAT THE INTERIM LEADER MAY RUN FOR PERMANENT LEADER.
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| Two down, Two left |
This is a bit like expecting that one candidate (Bob Rae) to take a vow of silence, renounce the real world, hasten off to a monastery, and forget about having the same rights that any other member of the Liberal Party has.
Since when has the Liberal Party adopted a black balling process for Bob Rae?
Who gives any MP or Senator or Board Director the moral or legal right to decide to alter the rights of a particular member? Have we not a constitution? Does that
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Thursday, 19 May 2011
Voters pruned Liberal MPs so as to prune Liberal sense of entitlement
0 comments Posted by 2011 at 14:03The results of the 2011 election were in many ways a continuation of a trend: a steady rapping of the Liberal knuckles by dissatisfied voters over the course of 3 elections.
Hope versus reality
And yet after each election loss, Liberals repreated the same errors, preferring to rely on hope rather than to practise politics the way that the brutal Westminster style parliamentary system, with its periodic elections and party system, requires.
Voters held their noses and walked over to the Conservatives; others decided to give another non-Tory party a chance and voted for Layton's promise to fix the broken Parliament; while others did what they had done before and stayed home, ignoring Liberal pleas for them to take a few minutes out of their comfortable routine to cast their votes.
Parliament is a place of symbolism. Today, the Liberal Party caucus said goodbye to Michael Ignatieff in the Railway Committee Room, its last meeting there. Jack Layton's NDP will be meeting there in future, continuing a century old tradition as the place with the Official Opposition Party meets.
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| Railway Committee Room |
The room is so-called because it was the meeting place of the Standing Committee on Railways, Canals and Telegraph Lines, which started life in 1867 and changed its name in 1965. Once the home of our Supreme Court of Canada, the painting The Fathers of Confederation hangs at one end and the Canadian Coat of Arms at the other end.
The NDP have earned their right to this room, having shattered the isolation of Quebec from active participation in our nation's Parliament rather than simply remaining as onlookers, and in so doing the NDP has moulded the contours of our political landscape in ways unthinkable just a short week or two ago. Their victory is a testament to the possibilities of hope and of change in our sprawling young country.
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| The Fathers of Confederation |
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A short, sharp battle has been waging over the past few days over the decision by the National Board of Directors of the Liberal Party, lead by President Alf Apps, to set conditions restricting the right of any candidate for the office of Interim Leader.
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| House of Commons |
With an absence of consultation of party members and the Caucus, the Board managed to leak several drafts of a ruling designed to prevent Bob Rae from running for the office of Interim Leader as well as permanent Leader (as is his right under Section 10(2)(e) of the Party Constitution).
The Apps Ruling also shunted aside any possibility of the veteran MP Ralph Goodale becoming Interim Leader by requiring fluency in both English and French.
And the third fiat of the Apps Ruling was to try to prevent the Interim Leader from having any discussions with any other party of a possible merger.
Adding insult to injury, the Apps Ruling sought to remove from Liberal Senators, who now outnumber the decimated 34-member MP contingent, of any right to vote for the Interim Leader, while providing that a successful candidate must win a majority of votes of the MPs.
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| Bob Rae |
Bob Rae is likely to become the Interim Leader:
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Lot's of faux indignation amongst media and bloggers and politicians over Harper's decistion to appoint three senators, including two who ran for election to the House of Commons, and lost. To judge from the response by some, you would think that Harper had broken at least a handful of laws, and done something totally immoral and unprecedented.
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| Parliament |
The Cat advises people to take a deep breath and think a bit before they do the Layton-kneejerk.
Tories make sense:
The Tory explanation makes sense:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREMarjory LeBreton, the government's leader in the Senate,
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Calling all lawyers: Help our Liberal Caucus understand Section 10(2)(e)
0 comments Posted by 2011 at 20:32Our MPs and Senators in our Caucus will meet to decide which candidate to elect as the Interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Unfortunately, the Board of Directors of the Liberal Party has imposed conditions on the candidates seeking election as Interim Leader.
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Saturday, 14 May 2011
If Michael Ignatieff had not allowed himself to be spooked by Harper's fearmongering in early 2008, we would have had a chance to implement the Coalition Agreement between the NDP and the Liberal Party, and for the next 18 months a progressive government would have initiated the stimulus program (without wasting as much taxpayer's money as the Tory trinket scheme did), and with a good shot at a further extension of 18 months by agreement of the parties.
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Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Our 34 MPs have to answer this question on Wednesday BEFORE they decide
0 comments Posted by 2011 at 21:18And the question goes to the heart of the issue of whether the National Board of Directors has the legal right under the Constitution of the Liberal Party to require that any candidate for Interim Leader commit not to run for election as permanent Leader.
My view is that the Board does not have this legal right to require this commitment not to run, and that any MP of the Liberal Party who agrees with
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The latest "machination' of the National Board of Directors (the self-appointed Marie Antoinettes of the Liberal Party of Canada) has nixed any hopes Liberal members might have had of Ralph Goodale running for Interim Leader, and given our Senators fractional votes:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREThe final version would seem to rule out Goodale, a veteran Saskatchewan MP who speaks little French.
There is a move afoot, according so some reports, to devalue the opinion of our Senators as compared to our MPs in the election of an Interim Leader to replace Michael Ignatieff.
Discrimination by Liberals towards Liberals:
The decision to appoint the Interim Leader is made under the party's Constitution by the National Board of Directors of the party. Ignatieff is on record as having called upon the Deputy Leader of the Party, Ralph Goodale, to call "a meeting of the Caucus" which will appoint an Interim Leader.
It is important to note that the Constitution is very precise about just who is entitled to appoint the Interim Leader in this situation. Section 50 defines Caucus as MPs and Senators (you can find the constitution in this post by bluntobjects).
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| Michael Ignatieff |
Dear Mr. Ignatieff:
A short while ago you precipitated the fall of the Conservative government for not following the rules governing our Parliament:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREShortly after 10 a.m., Mr. Ignatieff rose to “inform the House that the official opposition has lost confidence in the
If Joan Bryden is correct in the article today about the palace coup by the Liberal national board, then each and every member of the Liberal Party should rise up and take back our party from these unelected, non-representative men and women.
This is what Bryden wrote:
LIKE IT? CLICK HERE TO READ MOREThe conditions seem to be specifically aimed at stopping Rae, a fluently bilingual former NDP premier of
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