ROFL: The Green Party ‘concedes’ Labrador to the Liberals.

I did not get a chance to watch tonight’s debate yet, but I did get a good laugh at the headlines about Elizabeth May`s very canny playing of the Liberal Party on Saturday. Elizabeth May announced that the Green Party would not be running a candidate in the anticipated Labrador by-election. And some people actually bought it!

As I blogged 2 months ago, the Green Party is in a sticky situation. Firstly, the number of Electoral District Associations has declined as their funding from the per vote subsidy dries up. If you carefully examine the databases over at Elections Canada, you will see that the overwhelming majority of surviving EDA`s have received substantially ALL of their cash receipts in transferred per vote subsidy (Revenue Sharing) allocations from the central Party. That source of funds is drying up, and the steady flow of EDA`s being de-certified by Elections Canada for failing to file, is about to turn into a flood. In the 8 weeks since I last checked, 4 more Green Party EDA`s have been de-certified, and the impact of losing the subsidy is still to come. It is NOT going to be a good year for the Green Party, as they have long ago forgotten how to support and strengthen EDA`s. What this means is that the Green Party is going to have little or no ground game in place in 90% the ridings in Canada for the next general election. By no ground game, I mean they will not be able to beg the EDA executive to be candidate and financial agent for a make-believe campaign, lol. Everywhere they fail to field a candidate means zero votes counted, so without question, the Green Party vote, such as it is, will collapse in 2015, (with the exception of a number of strong BC Ridings).

Now this is the bit where Elizabeth May has scored a coup, turning a disaster into a triumph. She is undoubtedly aware that the Green Party is going to suffer a drastic reduction in votes in 2015. Obviously the Green Party will be in trouble if they fall to 3% of the vote. How can they preserve their significance? What Elizabeth May has achieved has been 2 parts luck, and 1 part sheer opportunistic cunning. First of all, two out of three November 2012 by-elections were in two relatively strong regions for the Green Party, Calgary, and British Columbia. While the Green Party is spread a mile wide, and an inch deep, they have enough resources in terms of volunteers, and cash to mount a respectable by-election effort pretty well anywhere in Alberta or BC. As a past member, I was bombarded along with the entire mailing list looking for phone bank volunteers for Calgary, and a lesser extent Victoria. The results were good enough to create an impression of strength. I guess I cannot fault most Canadians for not knowing just how fortuitous the chance for two competitive by-elections should occur at the same time. I have spent many hours poring over Green Party membership lists, and canvassing key ridings for various internal GPC Leadership and council elections. Calgary Centre, and Victoria are two of about 25 Electoral Districts where the GPC would be capable of concentrating enough volunteers, money, and identified supporter base to have a credible showing in a by-election.

When the Liberal Party Leadership campaign got under way, Elizabeth May seized her opportunity, and threw whatever support she could to the Candidate who openly supported her plan for electoral co-operation. Joyce was eager to accept, after all, political endorsements from David Suzuki are nothing to sneeze at in BC, or the rest of Canada for that matter, and Elizabeth May and David Suzuki go waay back. It is also fair to say that Joyce, being a regional BC politician should over-estimate the strength of the Green Party. BC has long been a regional `stronghold` for the GPC, with respectable double-digit results in numerous Ridings on EDay. If she had experience outside BC, she would know that the GPC she knows is anomalous in the wider Canadian context.

So with a decent pair of by-elections in her back pocket, and the windfall publicity that the Murray campaign was generating for her co-operation proposal, Elizabeth May immediately ran into a problem. Peter Innashue Penashue (updated Mar24) resigned, and an immediate by-election is looming in Labrador. Now if Victoria, and Calgary are the perfect by-election seats for the Green Party, Labrador is the single worst riding in the entire country! I am not exaggerating here folks, and the reason why can be captured by two words: Seal Hunt. A decade ago, the Green Party of Canada adopted a policy condemning the Seal Hunt in Labrador. It was rescinded shortly thereafter, but the damage had been done. To this day the Green party is synonymous with PETA in Newfoundland and Labrador. The last time I saw GPC data, there were a grand total of 26 past and present members in the entire province of Newfoundland & Labrador. 2 of them are in Labrador. If the Green Party were to run in the Labrador by-election, the result would make the November by-election in Durham Ontario  (4%) look good! Given the context in which Elizabeth May is making decisions, she played her hand marvelously by announcing on the eave of the Liberal Party leadership debate, that the Green party would  co-operate with the Liberals by not running a candidate in Labrador. I read this Gem of a quote in the Winnipeg Free Press article on Elizabeth May`s appeal. `In a news release, Liberal leadership candidate Joyce Murray claims she orchestrated the bid to elect a Grit, saying she called May and asked her not to run a candidate in the Labrador by-election.` ROFL, methinks somebody got played, and it sure as heck wasn`t Elizabeth May!

So there is Elizabeth May and the Green Party, hanging on by the skin of her teeth, but she is playing her hand out to the last card. I admire her for that, she has proven again that she is a very capable tactician. The real question is, will the Liberal Party take the bait, and breathe some life back into the Green Party in the form of an electoral co-operation deal? If my advice were solicited, I would suggest that the Liberal Party would be better off to let them wither on the vine, because they will not be able to influence the outcome in more than half a dozen ridings in 2015. Give them a free lunch in a couple of BC ridings, and they may survive long enough to start building their party locally again.

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Joyce Murray campaign is a FASCINATING example of how the Liberals can win the next election.

I have been preaching the virtues of the ‘new’ supporter category of Liberal Party ‘memberships’ ever since the Liberal Party announced it nearly a year ago. It is such an innocuous seeming innovation, but the implications are profoundly exciting. I am not at all surprised at the turn of events over the course of this Federal Liberal Party leadership race, in fact, I feel vindicated in my predictions of an enormous electoral juggernaut in the making, in the form and shape of Liberalist, the National contact database licensed from the Obama team.

I will quickly re-iterate my past arguments about the importance of a free, and simple way to register support for the Liberal Party, complete with name, email address, and postal code.

The starting point for any political database is the electronic register of all enumerated voters given to every Party, and contestant at the outset of an election campaign. The dataset provided by Elections Canada includes names, addresses, and poll numbers for the entire electorate. Please note that the Privacy act exempts political users of data from the prohibition against sharing personal and private data, so ANY DATA from ANY ELECTION or ( Municipal, Provincial, or Federal), or ANY ‘political purpose’, can be imported into a database like Liberalist. I mention that because, for example, a Municipal candidate in Toronto would also receive the residency status of each voter (Owner, Renter), as well as the School board affiliation where relevant. (Separate school board or Public school board). Someone like, say, Smitherman is perfectly entitled to hand over his database to the Liberal Party, and like magic (well, with a lot of back-end work), Liberalist now has a whole lot more actionable data on every voter in Toronto.

That data is enriched for free over the course of any election, as electronic updates are provided with the names of those who voted at advance polls, and people who register to vote during the writ period. Most political campaigns also dedicate a huge effort to enriching the data through telephone and door to door canvassing the electorate for voting intentions, and to a lesser extent issues of interest, willingness to accept a lawn sign, etc. So, over the course of an election, the database has a large chunk of people identified as voters in the advance polls. There are lists of people who are dedicated enough to take a lawn sign for your Party, (and the opposition). There are hopefully large numbers of people who have expressed the intention to vote for your Party, and a great many people have been identified as supporters for the other party’s as well. This is what I mean when I say the data is enriched. There is a growing level of detail about the electorate, built up for each and every voter.

I have argued that the KEY to winning elections is the ability to communicate directly, one-on-one with the electorate. The reason is that you do not need to rely on the Media to filter your message, and pass on half of what you want to say to every Tom, Dick, and Sally. You can control the timing of what you want to say. You can control the content of what you want to say. You can NARROWCAST a message to those electors most receptive to your message, provided you have sufficient data to segment your contests by relevant criteria. For example, if you have integrated all the free information provided to candidates at all levels in Toronto, you can create a list of Catholic home owners, who live in the polls adjacent to the Conservatives hypothetical new radioactive waste dump. Hmmm, I can think of a few political messages that could be delivered to such a list of people.

But the trick of it is, how do you communicate with those people once you have enough depth of data to segment? There are commercial data vendors who will happily sell the Party every phone number in Canada. It is cheap, and every political party shells out a few bucks to get this info into the database. But telephoning really large numbers of people is expensive, and time-consuming. That is why robo-calling is so popular, because it is a cheap way to reach out to loads and loads of people, even if it is not hugely effective. You can mail stuff to people, but that is pretty expensive too. It is much more effective than robo-calling, so there is definitely a place for the targeted mail-shot, but the major constraint is the availability of $. Then there is the magical, almost free medium of e-mail. That is the perfect political communications tool. It is so cheap as to be nearly free. It is perfectly suited to provide the means (hot links) to generate an IMMEDIATE response to your call to action embedded in an email. It can be adapted for huge mailings, or very small, highly targeted messages. In short, it is the shangri-la of organisers, and political field workers everywhere.

So this brings me to the exchange of value between the Supporter and the Liberal Party. Supporters are enticed to provide their name, email address, and postal code by the promise that they can influence the selection of the next leader by being given a vote. The value to the Liberal Party is that with those three pieces of information, they can match the supporters name to their list of electors, and attach the fact that THIS voter supports the Liberal Party, along with a virtually free means to contact them directly via their email address. Because of the nature of an electronic sign-up, it is also possible to gather a little more information about THIS supporter. When somebody fills out an online form, the page, or link within an email that brought them to the sign-up form can be traced, and attached to the actual data collected from the new supporter. So, for example, if a website that promotes electoral co-operation refers somebody to a Liberal Party supporter sign-up form (called a ‘landing page’), then Liberalist can be coaxed to make note of the fact that THIS supporter frequents electoral co-operation websites. If the referral came from a link in an email sent out by an organisation like, oh, lets say Leadnow, that fact should definitely be tagged in Liberalist. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal to most people, but it is this added DEPTH of data that allows the database to be segmented for targeted communications.

Which brings me to the theme of this post. Joyce Murray is the Liberal Leadership candidate whose main claim to fame (for now), is that she is proposing a controversial measure for the non-Conservative Party’s to co-operate by selecting joint candidates in specific ridings. The intent is to ensure that the anti-Conservatives do not suffer from vote splitting, and get to boot the Conservative candidate to the curb. This electoral co-operation will be consummated when the next (presumably NOT Conservative government) reforms the elections process to mandate preferential ballots be used in Federal elections.

So how is that working out for Joyce? Well, I have no axe to grind, but I think I speak for most Liberals when I say that Joyce was not considered one of the front ranked candidates. That has changed in a hurry though, because she has done the ABSOLUTE BEST JOB of leveraging the supporter category to strengthen her campaign. She has crafted a policy message that resonates with many, many, thousands of Canadians. She has worked the phones hard, and drawn a number of third parties into the fray on her behalf. Leadnow, FairVote Canada, and a number of other electoral reform organisations have been targeting their huge memberships with emails, and communications encouraging them to join the Liberal Party as supporters, so as to support their dearly held beliefs. Last week, she even pulled an endorsement from David Suzuki, encouraging Canadians to join the Liberal Party as supporters. I know a lot of democratic reform

What motivates YOU?

advocates from my Green Party days, and I can categorically state that they are HIGHLY motivated, and the turnout of her voters will embarrass the other candidates come time to count the ballots. ( I expect maybe a 20%-30% turnout of all Supporters in Liberalist, but Joyce will score better than 50%). That is because a general interest and affinity for the Liberal Party which most Supporters will evince comes nowhere near the motivational potential of a deeply held policy interest. I am pretty certain that Justin Trudeau will still win, because his campaign is signing up hundreds of thousands of supporters, but Joyce will probably surprise the hell out of everybody when the ballots are counted.

So that is Joyce Murray, the fascinating example. Now to how this example illustrates the coming Liberal election victory in 2015. The leadership race is fast approaching it’s conclusion, and with that the supporter category will come to an end.., or will it? I will ask a question, is the Liberal Party stupid enough to throw away the most important innovation in Canadian politics since the Conservatives created CIMS? Nope, I submit that the Liberal Party wants to WIN the next election, and they will figure out that they already have the tool in the drawer that will make this happen. The extraordinary results I anticipate for Joyce are a direct result of empowering motivated Canadians to support their policy ideals, within the ranks of the Liberal Party. In order to maintain the momentum created by the Leadership contest, it would take a pretty foolish organiser to ignore the demonstrated potential of a quick, free, and easy recruiting tool. A long time ago, I blogged that the Green Party could leverage the policy aspirations of Canadians, by creating forums, and vehicles for people who shared a common interest to gather together and share their passion under a Green Party umbrella. Well, the Green Party is toast now, but this is a far more viable proposal for the Liberal Party. Civil society in Canada includes a great many advocacy groups, whose values are not incompatible with the Liberal Party. With a little creativity, those advocacy groups, or more specifically THEIR MEMBERSHIP can be enticed into the Liberal fold by an offer to allow the public to help formulate policy for the Liberal Party to carry into the next general election. This is nothing new, but the big difference is that with a supporter category, the Liberal Party can inherit the contact data of advocacy groups, and assume direct access to large numbers of Canadians with an explicit understanding of their primary policy interest. The bargain that will have to be established should be fair. The post leadership Supporters should be granted a genuine opportunity to help shape the next election platform. Provided the sign-up remains free, and that the bargain is fair and open, it is not only possible, but it is likely that the Liberal Party will build the most comprehensive, and readily targeted political database in Canada over the next couple of years. Set a target of 2-3 million Canadian Supporters, and then make it happen. The improvements in money, volunteer hours, the high quality candidates, even the increased voter turnouts will  be significant. The competitive advantage will only happen once, because the Dippers, and Conservatives will follow the Liberal lead pretty darned quickly, but we can worry about winning in 2020 when we get to 2019. It will be a lot easier to contemplate after 4 plus years of a Liberal majority.

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Liberals Supporter category vital. What happens after the leadership race?

I first realised that my old friend, the Liberal Party of Canada was on the path to recovery when they introduced the Supporter category early in 2012. Canadians were invited to formally become a supporter of the Liberal Party, and offered a vote in the leadership contest as an inducement.  As I wrote in June, the idea nagged and teased me. I clarified my thoughts with a post on the potential impact of an easy to use self-identifier that wins an email address and commitment from just about any Canadian willing to call themselves Liberal. It took awhile, but by the time the Leadership contest commenced in earnest, every campaign was grappling with the implications, and more or less successfully gathering supporters as quickly as they could. In December, I was treated to a series of fundraising emails from the Liberal Party. I had signed up as a supporter, and was really interested in seeing HOW the Liberal Party used the contact information I had provided them. According to the information I gleaned from those fundraising emails, the new supporter category was starting to generate many hundreds of new fully paid up memberships, and first time donors to the Liberal Party. I expected it, but it was still very pleasant to see my earlier conclusions about the game changing nature of supporters for Liberals being translated into irrefutable dollars and cents.

According to publicly reported figures, the Liberal Party signed up 55,000 supporters PRIOR to the start date for the Leadership contest. That`s a whole lot of people voluntarily giving over their contact information, and making an internal commitment to support the Liberals. Mind you, these are the supporters came forward before the Leadership campaigns were vigorously recruiting and proselytising. Since that time, we have seen campaigns like George Takach identifying a `key constituency` (online gamers), and delivering his message of a digital bill of rights through the medium of email. I don`t know if this will get him a huge following, but it is smart. He correctly surmised that emails, and linked sign-up pages will be the keys to victory, so he went after a constituency that spends all their free time online. Another entirely predictable outcome of the changed ground rules has been the use of third-party mailing lists, and issue advocates to recruit Supporters for candidates, and the Party. There were recent media reports about the Construction Workers Union emailing their membership lists, and directing them to  Justin Trudeau Supporter sign-up page on Trudeau`s website.  Just have a quick look at that Union sign-up page. It speaks to my earlier posts on enriching the Liberalist database with additional actionable information on supporters and members. Every Union Joe who signs up will be identified as a Construction Worker Union member, who has an affinity for Justin Trudeau. Can you say `targetted communications`? The third example I want to mention is really exciting, because it has enormous potential, and demonstrates just exactly HOW the Liberal Party is going to be able to prepare for, and win the next General Election in 2015.

Wow! Win the next general election? Is bluegreenblogger off his rocker? Well last week there were a number of media reports regarding a huge boost to Joyce Murrays campaign that rocked my socks off. Several electoral co-operation advocacy groups have, more or less under their own steam recognised the potential of the supporter category to advance their POLICY interests with the Liberal Party. Leadnow boasting approximately 225,000 members, Fair Vote Canada, and other electoral co-operation advocates have been urging their `membership`to become supporters of the Liberals. Put this into perspective, during the recent NDP leadership race, Leadnow and Avaaz rounded up over 10,000 members`to support Nathan Cullens leadership bid. Wow! Those are full dues paying memberships, a much tougher sell than asking for email addresses and a little personal information.

Don`t get me wrong. I have not changed my mind about merging the `left`, and I still think it is a non-starter. But I think my point is well illustrated by this example.  My point is that while affinity for the Liberals can certainly draw a whole lot of support (and money) out of the woodwork for the Liberals, issues and policy are really really powerful motivators. With very little effort on the behalf of the Liberal Party, I expect tens of thousands of Canadians are going to respond to an emailed invitation to join the Liberal Party as a Supporter in order to promote Leadnows and Fair Votes objectives. Which leads me to the entire point of this post.

The Supporter category has been an unqualified success in rapidly building up the numbers of contacts and supporters in Liberalist database. The Supporter category has also improved the quality of data (the depth so to speak) on many thousands of Liberals inclinations, policy leanings, and some third-party affiliations. The Supporter category has generated thousands of dollars of donations directly for the Liberal Party. The reason it has been so succesful is because it is very easy to join, there is no up front cost, and a small but tangible benefit (the right to vote for the Leader) is the reward. The problem is that this unqualified success is slated to come to an end next month when membership and supporter sign-ups are closed for leadership race purposes. How can the Liberal Party continue to re-build and re-organise at the current breakneck speed without anything tangible to offer Supporters? The answer is sooo simple it is scary. Open up policy formulation to supporters! Every supporter who signs up to vote for and promote their deeply held beliefs is worth a dozen people with a  more ,or less vague affinity for a leadership candidate. They will be stepping forward with their time as volunteers, with their money as financial supporters, and their expertise for policy formulation, if only we give them the chance. Now is not the time to sit back and cheer about a one-off success. The Liberal Party has a historic opportunity to vault into the pole position for the next Federal General Election. Such a teeny. tiny innovation has the potential to revolutionise the Party, so please Liberals, do not let the opportunity pass.

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The Liberal Party Supporter category: Takach gets it. Does anybody else?

Yesterday I read a Toronto Star article entitled: How federal Liberals are using leadership race to get back in the game.

The premise of the article is that the new supporter category is a game changer for the Liberal Party, and that this late entry into the data collection business holds the promise of future relevancy for the Liberal Party.

`The Liberals aren’t just conducting a leadership contest. They are also using this race to engage in a massive, data-collection exercise — a catch-up effort. In the last couple of elections, the Conservatives and New Democrats have surged far ahead of the Liberals in this cutting-edge aspect of modern electioneering.` The article goes on to highlight some interesting facts not generally available to the public, for example, there have been over 40,000 supporters signed up by the Liberal Party, and the fact that Liberalist, the centrally managed and maintained database has only got data on approximately 1.3 million Canadians. Well all I can say to that depressing piece of news is that there are another 20 million Canadians to go, so the Liberal Party better get it`s shit together fast, because there are almost 1 million Canadians to contact every month between now and the next election. The sheer scope of the basic task aside, there was one interesting aspect of the article that gives me hope that the Liberal Party can actually build a winning campaign with the time they have in hand, and of all people, it is George Takach who really does seem to get it.

You see, the modern world of electoral politics is no longer about grand themes, and demographic-wide sweeping policy statements that `wow` huge segments of the electorate into voting for a Party. It is about identifying and understanding subsets of the electorate, communicating directly with smaller groups of often highly motivated voters, and winning their support in terms of volunteering, donating money, and proselytising for the Party. I have seen plenty of discussion about the supporter category within Liberal Party ranks. The discussion basically falls into two categories, on the one hand many Liberals seem to think it is a good idea that will draw in `new blood`, and shake things up a little. On the other hand we have the fossils who I would judge feel that it threatens their hard-won positions of influence within the Party. The surface arguments from this camp generally seem to consist of the idea that people can just go ahead and join, which means that there will be undeserving, or even hostile influences on the Liberal Party inherent in the `Trojan Horse`supporters. What I have seen very little of is a serious discussion about WHY it is that the Liberal Party has such a crappy database, and HOW it is that the Liberal Party can actually joint the real world of electoral politics. Seriously, I was having my doubts that the Liberal Party even has a clue about what has happened to them, until I read that what George Takach had to say about his leadership campaign.

Full disclosure, at this point in time, I anticipate casting my supporter ballot for Justin Trudeau, but that surely does not mean that I will be wanting to throw out the baby with the bath water once this Leadership contest is over. The baby in the bath water is George`s idea that he can target a specific community of interest, online gamers. He proposes: “There are a million and a half gamers in this country, most of them between the ages of 18 and 35. Right now they’re apolitical … I’m going to reach out to them. I’m going to show them social acceptance. My agenda about a superfast Internet, a digital bill of rights, will resonate very deeply with them.” Do not get me wrong. I find the idea of riding to power on a wave of suddenly motivated online gamers to be, well, a little `out there`. But while it may not be a practical program for winning the leadership of the Liberal Party, it does go waaay beyond what the Liberal party seems to understand about the supporter category, and it`s implications for retail politics. Whether George actually corrals 100,000 gamers, or only manages to gather in 500 gamers, he will have exploited the one two punch that the Liberal party MUST master if they are to ever win an election again. He has identified a readily approached community of interests. He has created a series of policy prescriptions to appeal to that community of interests, and he is now campaigning to collect actionable data on the individual members of this community, to whit, to sign them up as supporters, donors, and activists. And get this, he is doing all this years ahead of the next general election, so there is plenty of time between now, and then to build on his successes, mitigate his failures, and generally lock up the support, volunteer hours, and chequebooks of his community of interest(s). The data that he is collecting will be permanently preserved within Liberalist. This means that at any time the Liberal Party will have the option of calling on this community with targeted message that speaks to them directly. George himself will have built himself some kind of constituency within Liberal Party supporter ranks, and for so long as he champions their interests, and has the means to make targeted communications to them, he will retain a loyal base of support, both for himself, and the Liberal Party. For those of my readers stifling a yawn right now, I invite you to consider well what the Conservative Party has achieved with, for example, the community of rural long gun owners in Canada, or the Pro-Life lobby in Canada. This is how they have built a permanent campaign machine, the richest stream of donors, and volunteers in Canadian politics. The achieved this by ignoring large-scale demographics, and homing in on politically significant communities of interests buried within the electorate, just like George is doing.

So there it is. A simple idea no? Extrapolate it a little bit, and you have a political party that comes to represent a community of communities. A political party that can count on cash and volunteers motivated by real ideas, not fuzzy vague policies developed in a commitee room at some boring convention, but ideas that have PROVEN their worth by attracting committed volunteers and supporters to the Party. The Liberal Party obviously needs to build a serious electoral database, and get the basic information on the entire Canadian electorate. There is just no way to be a Party with aspirations to govern the country without a comprehensive database of voting intentions. Now it should be (but is not yet) equally obvious that collecting more intensive, and directly actionable data based on issues, and `communities of interests` is a second pre-requisite for governing the country. It will take many millions of dollars MORE than the Liberal Party has been spending in recent elections to just retain the support level the Liberals currently enjoy. It will take thousands of committed volunteers. It will take a serious improvement in the ground game of the Liberals. It has been the CPC that showed the way to find and win the commitment of $$ and volunteer time, but so far there are only a few lonely voices in the Liberal Party that get it, and are actually doing something about it. I take my hat off to George Takach for having the cojones to go out on a limb with his `out there`idea, that is not so very out there after all. I am very curious to see whether or not the Liberal Party can recognise, and take steps to enable more people like George to set their sights on more and different communities of interests, and start building up the depth of their data, in tandem with the pure donkey work of broadening the database by getting 100% of Canadians voting intentions into Liberalist.

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Liberalist: The Liberal Party is FINALLY fixing their greatest failure.

The real world of electoral politics has been changing for over a decade. The Liberal Party of Canada has finally, at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour noticed WHY they have all but disappeared. It boils down to the fundamentals of the new politics. Know the electorate well, and communicate with them directly. Some months ago, I became a ‘supporter’ of the Liberal Party of Canada. The reason I did so, was because it appeared that the Liberal Party was finally coming out of their fossilized shell, and adapting to the new reality. The evidence I had to go on was that the rhetoric of change emanating from the Liberal AGM was being matched by a concrete measure, the creation of the supporter category within Liberal membership ranks, and the breaking up of the very local monopoly on electoral databases in favour of a centrally administered database called Liberalist.

Historically, databases and lists of members and supporters within the Liberal umbrella were (and are) a critical tool in the only game that seemed to count within the Liberal Party. To whit, Leadership contests, and the internal battle for control of the natural governing party. As such they were jealously guarded from fellow Liberals, and sharing those names and contacts was a guaranteed ticket to irrelevancy for the ‘holder’ of the data.  While the Conservative Party of Canada spent the last 10 years single-mindedly enriching their CIMS centrally managed database(s), the Liberals were recruiting phony rent-a-member recruits, and jealously guarding their names in readiness for the next round of the leadership battle. I have certain knowledge that even at a constituency level, election canvas results were hoarded as a weapon for candidates to use in the battle to control the local EDA. Fact is, the distribution of power across electoral districts, regional organisations, provincial divisions, and then even to the discrete factions vying for control of these rinky dink units prohibited the creation and maintenance of the most important tool for organising for, and contesting general elections. Now that the Liberal Party is clearly NOT the natural governing party, the prize of leadership is an empty chalice. I have an inkling that the sensibility that: “If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately” has at last set itself deeply into the party structures at all levels.

So, pray-tell what is the evidence that this is the case? Well the most compelling evidence is the very existence of Liberalist, and the fact that it is being populated with new data. The supporter category introduced for the first time with the current leadership contest is the direct evidence that I have. The Liberal Party is drilling this message into the EDA structure, and has offered an enormous reward to Leadership campaigns that embrace it. Supporters are entitled to vote for the next leader of the Liberal Party. The threshold for becoming a supporter is pretty low. To be enrolled, one has to click a link like this one, fill in your postal code, name, and email address, and voila, you are a supporter! So what good is that to the Liberal Party, if all you need to do is like them enough to label yourself supporter? Well, one at a time it is useless. Multiply it by thousands of people prepared to self identify as someone with an affinity for the Liberal Party, and you have just enriched the basic name number and address that every Political party already owns. The requirement for an email address provides the means to communicate directly more or ;ess for free. The incentive for leadership candidates to stuff this data into liberalist in bulk is going to enrich the whole Party permanently. The data is rolling in as I write, and Liberalist will NEVER stop growing, just so long as the Liberal Party keeps making it very easy to ‘sign up’.

So here we are, the centralised tool exists, and it looks like it is such a useful tool that all Liberal organisations will rely on it to manage and retain their data. Collection, retention, and sharing of data is a necessary condition for joining the real world of electoral politics, but it is NOT a sufficient condition. The sufficient condition lies in the application of the data to the tasks at hand. Somebody in the Liberal Party obviously understand this, and is in a position to take the next (baby) steps with it. You see, the tool itself becomes sharper and more effective as you populate it with richer and richer data at the individual contact level. It is not enough to have a name, address, and phone number. You need to be able to communicate directly and as cheaply as possible directly with each contact. Hence the need for email address from new supporters. You need to be able to single out collections of individuals based on more sophisticated criteria. What you need is a lot of RELEVANT information about masses and masses of people, so that you can tailor mass communications to people who will be receptive to your message. The next step is to take the data, no matter how shallow it is, and to both make practical use of it, and enrich it with additional actionable information at the individual level. This is happening, and I have been very chuffed to see it succeeding so quickly.

So how the heck does a mere supporter, with no real connections or pipeline to the Liberal Party structure know that it is succeeding? I signed up as a supporter, and I can attest to the use to which the Liberal Party has put that teensy nugget of information I gave them about myself. Over the past few months, I have received occasional communications via the email address I provided. There was the expected automated ‘welcome new supporter’ email at the time of enrollment. It was followed by infrequent communications, from the leader, from individual Liberal executives, all of them with a modest request, maybe an ask for a small donation, and a policy message of some sort associated with the ask. What that tells me is that the Liberal Party has incorporated my name into a program of enriching their data about myself. I can guarantee that everybody who responded to a specific ask, connected with a specific policy or issue, will be ‘tagged’ in the database as responsive to this issue. The asks have not been overbearing. They did not ask me to sacrifice my life for the Liberal cause, they merely tried to obtain a small action from me to certify my affinity with that specific message. The typical $5 contribution is NOT the objective of the ask, it is the funky and essential BY-PRODUCT of enriching the database. The $5 is what pays for the process of finding out what hundreds, and thousands, and soon to be hundreds of thousands of Canadians care about, and WHY they deem themselves Liberal supporters. Those who pop $1,000 onto their credit cards when thrown a soft pitch about a specific issue have just qualified themselves as deeply motivated and concerned about that issue.

And HOW do I know that the process is working? Because the Liberal party is not hoarding the info. They are freely offering a report card on the success of the supporter category. Think for a little bit about the above process I am describing. It is not an isolated event, it is a systematic effort to continuously grow both the breadth (numbers of names) and the depth (affinities and added information about those names) of Liberalist data. I have three emails from 3 different Liberal luminaries over the past three days. Each one provides a total of the numbers of respondents to the pitch. here is what I LOVE TO SEE:

1) On Thursday, Anne McLennan asked me to be one of their targeted 5,000 donors of $5 (or more) and told me that there were 600 so far:

“It is a pleasure for me to be in touch with you during the holiday season.  So many of us are sending thoughtful and caring wishes for our country to the Liberal website. I hope each of the 601 wishes for Canada that donors have shared with us so far will inspire you to give. “

2) On Friday, Stephan Dion told me of the horrors of out of control F35 procurements and told me:

“In this campaign it doesn’t matter how much you give, just that you give. That’s why I’m personally thrilled that 719 Liberals just like you – including 326 who gave for the first time — have each chipped in an average of $47.71.”

3) This morning, Michael Ignatieff expanded on the horrors of the F35 procurement fiasco and told me:

“So far 1,001 Liberals like you, including 455 bold first-time donors, have told us what issue they care about. They’ve joined the fight.”

So there is the concrete evidence that the Liberal Party is well along in the process of joining the real world of electoral politics. They are systematically growing and enriching Liberalist, and as a by-product have raised tens of thousands of dollars in three days from supporters being converted into NEW DONORS. There is every reason to believe that the current leadership contest is going to add tens of thousands, or more likely hundreds of thousands of supporters to Liberalist. Many of them shall graduate to fully paid up members, volunteers, candidates, EDA executives, and field organisers for the new and improved Big Red Machine. Next Christmas we will be seeing emails telling us of hundreds of thousands of dollars, from thousands of new donors. This is the beginning of a long good-bye to the CPC’s electoral dominance in Canada.

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It’s Official, the Green Party of Canada Membership will decide on Leadership.

Before I start, I just checked my visitor stats, and it’s at 30,008! That’s 10,000 visitors in 3 months and 3 days. Wow, there were a LOT of people very interested in what’s happening with the GPC leadership contest!

It didn’t make sense to have a post with a shelf life of 1 day hanging around on the front page, so I’m bumping it with a post on the outcome of Sunday’s Green Party council debate on the leadership race. I am happy to say that my plea for reason, and my desperate last ditch attempt to ensure that no illegal motions were passed was successful. Council has voted to draft a motion to amend the Part by-laws regarding a leadership race to submit to the membership at the August BGM in Toronto. In the interim, the Leadership race fairness committee has been tasked to prepare the terms and conditions of the race. These terms and conditions will be predicated on the terms and conditions of the last race. For those interested, Steve Kisby chairs that committee, and I’ll publish the names and email addresses of all the members in an upcoming post.

The reason that the race terms and conditions have to be updated is because the council motion acknowledges that if the By-Law amendment fails, nominations for the leadership race will commence immediately, and a new leader will be elected before the year end. So now, the die is cast, and the leadership contenders have a sense of the rulebook, and a timeline to plan for.

I have recieved a number of emails with condolences about the outcome of Sundays vote. As I read them, I realised that there is something I simply haven’t made clear, and I’d like to clarify it now. I have NOT advocated an immediate race because I hate Elizabeth May, and want her out at any cost. What I have been argueing for is a consistent application of the rules, and for the clearly expressed intention of the membership, as is written into our By-Laws and constitution, to be respected. It was intolerable to me that the rules should be tinkered with, and disrespected by our governing council. This would be severely unhealthy for our Party, and would store up trouble for the future. The very fact that the membership will be consulted at the BGM, and that their intentions and will are NOT being pre-supposed and manipulated contents me completely. The practical needs of the competing leadership contenders have been partly addressed, and the commitment to flesh out the rulebook allows for the small tweaks that will deliver a great contest. The next Leader of the GPC will be decided by an open, and vigorous contest, that will allow for an airing of our differences, a contest for the hearts and minds of the membership, and a reconciliation of our differences at the conclusion of the race.  Provided the manipulation is over, win or lose, I AM CONTENT.

The paragraph above does not go far enough though. The characterisation that I increasingly see that I am  hater of Elizabeth is not true whatsoever. Elizabeth May has brought a great many benefits to the Green Party. She is an extraordinarily articulate, and intelligent woman. She is a quick thinker, and has a grasp of the effects and impacts of environmental policy second to NO-ONE in Canada, or even anywhere in the world! She IS our star candidate, and has more electoral potential in her pinky than 90% of our candidates in a general election. After this leadership race is over, I will move heaven and earth to help her get elected to Parliament.

Huh! That surprised everybody didn’t it? Well let me make clear the rational basis of my criticisms of the Leadership of the GPC, and WHY I believe it could only be rectified by a leadership race. Unlike any other Party in Canada, the Green Party has no formally elected Chief Administrative, or Chief Executive officer. (Often called the Party President) In theory, the Party machinery is managed by a hired Executive Director, while some various functions are handled by appointed sub committees of council, and the council elected Chair. Well, this really sucks, because the impact is that informal mechanisms actually trump the formal structure. The Leader, whom we all pretend is being elected as the chief communicator, in fact has great moral suasion, and by default, ends up shall we say, strongly influencing hiring, organising principles and structure, budget processes, campaign planning, and who has to clean the teacups after an in-person council meeting. She is not really accountable for failures in this area, because those failures aren’t officially her fault. As for an accountable council, well in practice it isn’t. Council members come and go through a revolving door. When accountability means you may lose a council election, and be spared feeling guilty for not reading all the memorada, and motions before the meetings, and not have to attend a monthly bun-fight, it’s hardly a meaningful sanction for mis-behaviour now, is it? So in effect, there is no accountability for councillors. These are also the reasons for the revolving door to the top staff positions. THEY are accountable for what they don’t control.

While Elizabeth has universally acknowledged skills, and attributes, I do not believe that these skills stretch to all places, and all things. She simply does not have the professional experience in managing processes, budgets, and multi-layered objectives that are essential to the operations of a successful political Party. No one person contains the full skill set, so that’s not a nasty attack. It’s a recitation of facts. When she found herself elected leader of a political party 4 years ago, she didn’t know anybody there very well. She saw levers of power, and she saw staff positions which needed filling. She looked amongst her closest trusted advisors, and allies from the Sierra Club, and from her personal life, and she filled those positions, and she pulled those levers of power. I know full well how many people were jockeying for influence with her at that time, because I was at the heart of her campaign team. Can I blame her for taking the steps she did? Not really, because she didn’t KNOW in her bones that political Party’s are pluralistic, that campaigns happen on multiple levels, and good politics requires good accomodation, and conciliation skills. So in a nutshell, that’s how the bunker mentality started. Our leader had the campaign team needed, but she didn’t have the management team to ‘close the deal’.

So now we’re going to have a leadership race, and the roots of our governance problems will be right out there on the table. I am working on behalf of a process oriented candidate who is a truly superior manager, trainer, and facilitator. She has a successful career, to which she will return after the job is done of facilitating the renewal of our Party’s governance and operations is completed, or at least well started. She will work to raise the profile of shadow cabinet, and put the media relations tools of the Party at the disposal of our up and coming personalities. She will work to ensure the National Party co-ordinates growth, message, and both strategic and tactical objectives with the EDA’s, and regional organising teams. She will work to ensure that we research effective messages, and systematically grow our support in a TARGETED and deliberate manner. Then she will retire from the position, and happily be our much beloved elder stateswoman, at the side of Elizabeth, and Jim Harris. Elizabeth has made a great contribution, and I really hope she will stay on to continue her career in the Green Party, but we must use the existing processes, and the moral suasion of the leaders position to recraft the operating and management structure of the Green Party.

So I sincerely hope this post will put to bed the silly comments, and half baked characterisations of myself, BGB as a hater of Elizabeth. It’s simply not a worthy criticism, especially now that we have a really serious contest in place for the hearts and MINDS of the Green Party of Canada’s membership. Now have at it with your’ comments! (6 weeks to meet the next 10,00 site visitors?)

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An Open Letter the Green Party of Canada federal council:

I’ll apologise if the letter below, and this blog post is not as cogent as it should have been. I am writing this post standing up, buzzed out on percosets. My Kidneys are acting up again, and I cannot sit down, pee, or think straight, but I could not let the opportunity to influence the decisions council must make today pass me by because of a little pain. Incidentally, I know I should have been returning calls, answering emails, and meeting my commitments better this week, but I have been stumped by my hopefully soon to be forgotten bloody damned kidneys!

First the context, then the text of the letter.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you’ll know that the Green Party of Canada’s federal council has been consumed by some strange, and untimely debates of late. More importantly, there has been an enormous amount of manoevering, and negotiations between the three more or less openly campaigning leadership candidates, and the current leader. I believe that the by-laws are being subverted in order to serve the purposes of these back room operators. The public spin has no realtionship with the underlying purposes and intent of some of the participants. Like many GPC members, one of the reasons I support the GPC is the commitment to doing politics differently, and in an open manner. That is actually the reason for the very existence of this blog. To shine a light into darkened corners, and seperate spin from reality to enable members to make informed decisions on the management, and governance of OUR Party.

Federal council will be debating 5 or 6 motions to delay, obstruct, eliminate, or enforce the provisions in our by-laws, and constitution which mandate a leadership contest this year. I am upset that my hand has been forced, and that it is even neccessary that council be chivvied into performing their duties. I’ll return the favour today, and force some other positions into the open. Jim Harris gracefully stepped aside before the last race, and council did their very best to ensure the ensuing race delivered huge benefits to the GPC. I fear, and am working to prevent a situation whereby our current council, leadership, and the three other known candidates can create an environment where the next leader of the Green Party of Canada will be determined in secret, by shaping the terms of the contest behind closed doors.

It does not surprise me that Adrian Carr should be supporting a quiet deal to support Elizabeth May and delay the race. Adrian and Elizabeth are as thick as .. I was going to say thieves, but that isn’t very nice, so instead I’ll say they are extremely close. Adrian has staked her career on being the loyal, and natural successor to Elizabeth, and will be enjoying the support of staff, and Elizabeth when the time comes. As Elizabeth’s appointee to the Deputy Leader position, she draws a salary, receives support from the Party, for example when she tours the EDA’s building support for her leadership, er, I mean, training the EDA’s. She is granted many opportunities for public exposure that the other candidates will never, ever be granted by this council and leader, so it’s fair to say that every years delay is a free lunch and paycheque. Why should she jeopardise these fantastic perk’s by allowing a leadership race?

If Frank’s supporting a quiet deal, it’s a little more surprising. It’s obvious that he has made a strategic calculation that Elizabeth May cannot be beaten in a direct contest. Therefore he is desirous of a delay so that Elizabeth can get clobbered in SGI, and will be dumped with all her baggage. While I think these strategic considerations are partially valid, it is a mistake to be party to a backroom deal to ‘handle’ the leadership races terms and conditions. The Green Party membership will not react kindly to this whole fiasco. I can be frank, and confess that I was very close to joining Frank’s team last year. His candidacy is important, and brings value for the Party as a whole, so I’ll offer some advice, at no-charge. Either commit your campaign to running against Elizabeth, or step back and wait to contest against the field in the next one. Frank , you are ideally positioned to prepare for, introduce motions to, and organise to pass those motions at the BGM in Toronto. If you want to influence the terms and condidtions of the race, do so in a Green, and legitimate way in the place and time designated for that purpose. Continuing to play at influencing the backrooms risks making you a patsy, and will definitely wrong-foot you with those whose support you will need the most. Just a friendly heads up about the freight train coming down the tracks at you ;-)

I will extend a proper courtesy to the third candidate, based in Toronto. Unlike Frank and Adrian, he has made no public moves to tip his hand. He has the same right as my candidate to control the timing and method of launching his campaign. He is however quite new to the Party, and so has been very busy raising his profile in Ontario at least. There is one very big banana peel lying right at his feet though. The Green Party membership is allergic to backroom politics, and he hasn’t been here long enough to understand that deep in his bones. In politics, as in the field of marketing, perception has a way of turning into reality. Because his candidacy is the best thing that could possibly happen for Adrian Carr, he risks being branded as a status quo candidate, or even a patsy of Adrian and Elizabeth. I have faith that this is not the case, and that his purpose is not simply to split the Ontario vote. My advice to him would be to stay the course. Continue to build a constituency within the Party, and use this campaign to meet and understand the incredibly diverse constituencies within the Green Party. Keep it real, and don’t get caught up in negative campaigning, and mud slinging. Be a part of the reconciliation after the race is done. You will be well positioned for a responsible position after the election, and I don’t think that you run a real risk of being cast aside and villified when the race is over, the way Chernushenko was after the last race.

So now that I have pissed off pretty well everybody, and without further ado, here is the text of the letter I forwarded to council this morning.

February 21, 2010. 11:00 AM

It is with regret that I am draughting this open letter to council.

Just under a year ago, I agreed to offer my services to a wonderful francophone woman, and a very skilled manager, who has been actively organising a campaign to become the next leader of the Green Party of Canada. Whether or not there would be a race in 2010 was not in question, because it is mandated, with strict language, by the Constitution and By-Laws of the Party. Naturally, the final decision, and any public announcement of the intent to run cannot be made until the terms and condidtions of this years Leadership contest have been publicised. I am not writing this letter as a casual observer, I am extremely familiar with the context in which this debate is occurring.

I think by now, you are all familiar with your’ roles and duties, which are to support, and enforce the Constitution, and By-Laws of the Party. The authority of council is established by the constitution, and by running for, and accepting the offices which you now hold, you accepted the legal obligations to enforce the by-laws. The intent, and purpose of the By-Laws that you are now debating are clear, that there should be a Leadership contest in 2010. Not a Review, not a plebiscite, but a proper contest, with all the trimmings. The authority to change the pertinent By-Laws rest with the membership, not council. A number of the council motions that you are debating today are plain and simply illegal. In some cases, they pre-judge the will of the membership by assuming a change in the By-Laws will be passed at the August BGM. In other cases, they simply arrogate authority to council which council does not have.

“In Knox v. Conservative Party of Canada (Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, 2006), Justice Sulatyky wrote:

“10 If the political party must control and regulate its internal affairs, it must, in my view, also do it in accordance with their own rules and constitution.

“11 A political party of course is free to leave to its leader the appointment of all of its candidates, but once it chooses to adopt a different process for selection of candidates, even though in the end the leader might have the ultimate authority, it must follow the process that it itself sets up for choosing those candidates.

“12 And because the process is given the blessing of the statute, as enunciated in the Ahenakew decision, the process is subject to judicial review. That is the inevitable consequence of generous election funding of parties and their candidates from public coffers.

“13 So while my inclination and my belief was that Courts should not interfere in nomination processes, I find that the law as it has evolved gives the Courts jurisdiction as a result of the statutory constitution of political parties and constituency associations to review decisions of those parties and associations.””

While this is a ways from a formally bought and paid for legal opinion, the language is clear enough that there is a legal case to be made, and a competent court to hear the case. This case pertained to nominated candidates at the EDA level, for a general election, but the language of Justice Sulatyky leaves little doubt that this would apply far more widely. There are other supporting precedents as well. While the campaign I am working on does not at this moment anticipate launching a legal challenge, this option is generally available to anybody who could demonstrate they intended to launch a leadership bid, and were quashed by an illegal act of council. Any disgruntled EDA, member, campaign, candidate, or their nominees could spend a few hundred dollars, and cause the GPC, and our current leadership severe financial, and public embarrasment. My greatest fear is that operatives from a certain right wing party will use this issue as a tool to justify the elimination of the per vote public subsidy to political Party’s. I’m afraid it would make for a compelling media story. It will be no surprise to any on council that there are armies of well funded ConBots that would revel in such a campaign.

I have called on council, both via my public blog, and more directly by lobbying some individual council members, and a letter to council in late 2009, requesting clarity on the terms of the leadership race. While some of you may be of the opinion that there are only the current leaderships, and several other undeclared candidates opinions that need to be accomodated, please take this letter as due notice that there are other interested Party’s, with a direct interest in the outcome of todays vote on leadership motions, and those other interested Party’s will vigorously, and publicly defend their rights and prerogatives.

I will be more than pleased to make formal representations to the leadership fairness committee regarding how to control the risks of a conflict between the leadership race, and a potential general election. This can easily be acheived with consensus provisions to delay the vote in the event of a general election. I would respectfully submit that establishing a fair and balanced contest, most importantly in a timely manner that respects both the intent of the membership, and the practical considerations is the proper business of council at this late date. I await the results of councils deliberations with interest, and remain cordially yours;

Matthew Day
GPC member in good standing

If you are interested in serving our Party, and our great country by volunteering your support to our campaign, please send me an email with your contact information including a phone number and best time to contact you to: bluegreen1965@live.com. I can give you a lot more information directly, but would prefer not to publicise in print until the legal spending limits, and conditions of the campaign are known.

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Green Party Riding Executives: What do you think of revising the Revenue Sharing Agreement?

Follow the Money...

I just read a blog post over at Dave Baglers’ blog. Given that of late, Dave has been unashamedly defending the Central Party status quo against all comers, I have drawn the conclusion that this is a trial balloon being floated by centralising forces, (read: The current Leadership), at the hollowed out Ottawa head office. Dave, if it ain’t so, then by all means respond in the comments.

Here’s a copy of the RSA as enacted. (Thanks Dave): Revenue_Sharing_Implementation_Plan_as_adopted_Nov-20-2005_formatted

I’ll get to my meat and potatoes argument about the viability of the RSA in a minute, but first a little background. The Green Party of Canada is in a financial pickle. In my humble opinion, this is a self-inflicted wound. The GPC has extremely predictable revenues. There is the federal per-vote subsidy, which is shared with Electoral Districts, and Provincial Divisions according to a predictable formulae. There are pretty stable revenues from the central Party’s fundraising. (yes, I’m referring to those emails you get once or twice per month). There are election expense refunds, which are one time shots to re-imburse funds after a general election. That’s it on the Revenue side. On the expenses side of the equation, there are payrolls, rent heat and lights, Insurance, some travel for council purposes, and a plethora of other, predictable period expenses. Then there’s discretionary spending.

A well managed organisation would look at an extremely predictable revenue flow, and then allocate their resources according to a priotised list of things-to-do-that-cost-money. Mandatory processes, like reporting and compliance would be top priority. Why? Because they are legal obligations. Other totally predictable obligations would be funded in descending order of priority. Council would be there to argue with staff over priorities, and to make sure that priorities like team building trips to the Bahama’s don’t get off the ground. Once you get to the point in your list where the money has all been allocated, you have a budget. When you want to argue about additional priorities, you either craft a plan to enhance your’ resources, or you bump something off the list to make way for the new priority.

This process isn’t rocket science. It’s something that the Prussian Civil Service excelled in back in the 1600’s, and it’s called budgeting. The Prussians did it well, which is why they rose from obscurity, and became a Great Power. Now if you fail to follow a process something like this, it doesn’t change the resources you have to dispose of. It doesn’t change the obligitory expenses either. By itself, what it does do is ensure that you don’t have many unexpected surprises.

Last month, the Green Party membership was surprised to discover that there was a fiscal emergency. Organisers had to be sacked, Catherine Johansen ‘resigned’ from the Election Readiness Committee, and a whole bunch of panic started in the Ottawa office. All of a sudden, the election debt had to be retired, and as if by magic, there just isn’t enough money in the darned bank. Now the terms and conditions of the election loans were clear and explicit. The payroll costs were 100% predictable. The discretionary spending? A total grab bag of unprioritised spending. Jobs for friends in Nova Scotia. Toss a whack of money to Adrian Carr’s Provincial Division in BC. Let’s toss $50 grand to the SGI Campaign for Elizabeth. Yes, I know that the last item was supposedly the top priority for the Party, but where were the cuts to the budget to accomodate it? Did council even consider that this brand new top priority meant that organisers had to be fired? Were YOU aware that you were going to lose your’ Provincial organiser because of it?

Remember folks, within ten minutes of the electoral returns being publicised, our Leader and her council knew within 5% what their resources would be. If they knew what one was, they could have created a Schedule of Receipts and Disbursements that nailed cash flows by date, within a very narrow band. Did they do so? NO. Did they prioritise and exercise their fiduciary duty to the membership? NO. This so-called crisis was created by our Federal Council, and it was created by Elizabeth May, plain and simple. Now some will accuse me of a biased, and unbalanced attack, because I have posted this blog. That is untrue. I would lambaste anybody who mismanaged my Party’s operations so badly. Some people would encourage me to refrain from public criticism, because it may spoil the electoral chances of Elizabeth May in SGI. My response is, don’t shoot the messenger. Our finances are pretty public, and there are opposition researchers eagerly awaiting our next public accounting. Better a trickle of negative reporting now to turn it into yesterdays news that much quicker. If we wait until the ‘AHA!’ moment when the finances are public, then timing is outside our control.

So what’s this got to do with the title of this post? By now that’s becoming obvious, no? If council is truly planning to revoke the ‘Sharing’ part of the Revenue Sharing Agreement, then I would like to be on the record before the bunfight begins. Revoking the RSA will be promoted as an ‘Emergency Measure’. The emergency was a product of fiscal incompetence. I would personally prefer to revoke council, and the Leadership, and I suspect that, were the truth known, a substantial portion of the Green Party membership would be upset enough to share this opinion. The root cause of the problem is that our Leadership is not competent to manage our money. The RSA was created out of a huge bruhaha back in the day. It was argued over, negotiated, brokered, debated by the membership, work-shopped, voted on by the membership at large, and finally, grudgingly enacted by Council. Dumping it to grab some more resources will not fix the incompetence in Ottawa. It will simply paper over the cracks. It’s absolutely guaranteed that the Leadership will continue to fritter, and fail to set priorities, so we’ll be back in the hole again immediately. In the meantime, the EDA’s will be boiling mad, and out for the Leaderships blood. Can you spell: Recall Motion? Not very good politics, eh?

The RSA was predicated on several motions passed by the membership in years gone by. It was intended to promote the formation of EDA’s, while still allowing for the Party Hub in Ottawa to have predictable cash flows. There are arguments that could be made that not all EDA’s use the money wisely. There are arguments that could be made that the RSA was created by council, therefore it can be revoked by council. There are also arguments that could be made that Provincial Divisions are really problematic under the Elections Act. While these arguments may have lot of merit, it’s moot. Why? Because the membership has spoken, council was fulfilling their mandated role when they enacted the RSA. The EDA share has definitely promoted EDA formation, and endurance. Even in the lamest EDA, there is a degree of continuity because they don’t want to abandon their bank account, and revenue sharing cheque. Who cares if some of them aren’t picture perfect organisations? The membership mandated that they get a share, this mandate has proven very effective at achieving it’s stated purpose. Just take a look at the last elections results. A growing number of local campaigns are breaking the 10% threshold, and surprise, surprise, they all have EDA’s in place to back them up.

Provincial Divisions are another kettle of fish. The membership, and RSA mandated that Provincial Division formation be promoted as well. That was before it became abundantly clear that the revisions to the Election Finances Act had rendered PD’s obsolete in Canada. Because Provincial Divisions are not legally seperated from the National Party accounts, it is problematic to ask the Party’s financial agent to be responsable for the books and spending decisions, unless thay are as directly under the Agents control as the National Party is. Why go through the cumbersome exercise of transferring money, and then scrutinising it seperately?

So now we have come full circle. As usual, I have digressed, and tread a tortuous path to my conclusion. We have a Leadership race coming up. Our current Leadership has demonstrated that they are not competent to fulfil their fiduciary, and governance duties. Draw your’ own conclusions, but perhaps you should consider a new Leader? One who can actually demonstrate some competence in the real world? Stay tuned, and soon I’ll be able to table another option for you, and I think you’re gonna like her and her team!

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The Green Party of Canada’s Leadership race conundrum.

On your mark, get set, wait a minute, wait a bit more...

I was somewhat pleased to note that the GPC Federal Council has started thinking a little about how next summers leadership convention will be run, and they are also starting to consider the rules for the leadership contest that our constitution requires goes with the convention. I have heard rumours, (and more than just idle speculation), about some pretty exciting potential candidates from across the spectrum. This is really great news for the Green Party of Canada! The membership numbers are in a free fall, and we are in financial straights with a substantial election debt to pay off. An exciting 5 way, or 6 way race will re-invigorate the Party. There will be of thousands of new members added to the rolls, and the Party’s share of leadership fundraising, and directed contributions just might save us from financial embarrasment.

So what’s the conundrum? Well it goes like this; Elizabeth May has a constitutionally mandated term of 4 years as leader. That term expires in August 2010. We are in a minority Government situation, and as we are all aware, the next general election could come any time between now and 2013. The argument might be made that since the Party has given Elizabeth May $60k, plus her leaders salary, and three supporting staff positions to prepare for an election in SGI, (And before that $100k in Central Nova, and before that $70k in London), we cannot possibly hold the Leadership convention next summer in Toronto. After all, there might be a general election in full swing, and we cannot waste all those hundreds of thousands of dollars that we have wagered on getting our Leader elected.

There`s some merit in that argument as well, although I don`t think that we can simply make up the leadership race terms on the fly just like that. So there`s the conundrum. The Green Party of Canada wants to have an enormous, and much needed boost from a much aniticipated Leadership race. This boost cannot be had unless all of the various leadership campaigns have plenty of lead time to build their field organisations, and communications teams. Let`s face it, it takes time to build the team and plan that can win this contest, and in all fairness, our sitting council owes it to the membership to come clean with a fair and impartial rule book for the contest. We just won`t be able to recruit the very best candidates, and will have trouble getting the kind of resources lined up to blow the roof off, if prospective candidates cannot even be certain that a race will happen. Imagine if you will that you are seriously considering taking on the major task of winning the leadership of the GPC. You need to start recruiting, building, and committing a chunk of your life to this contest. I suspect that you will hesitate if 6 months before the contest  is theoretically beginning, there was no rule-book, no time frame, no spending limits, in fact absolutely no indication of what the rules will be…

Sharolyn Vetesse, impartial judge (photo credit Globe and Mail.com)

In the last leadership race, which was won by Elizabeth May, council struck an election fairness committee. It was chaired by Sharolyn Vetesse, if memory serves. I can tell you first hand that it was very equitable, and impartial. The spending limits were too low, and the contestants had very restrictive limits on how they could reach the membership, but at least the rules were clear, and applied to all. It would serve as an adequate model, provided the chair were truly impartial, and the spending limits were increased. It takes quite a bit of money just to travel around the country. It`s OK if you`ve got a book tour, or an EDA training tour to cover your travel costs, but if you are covering expenses to visit hundreds of EDA`s out of a $50,000 campaign chest, then you just don`t have enough money to make all the rest of a viable campaigns infrastructure happen. If the Party takes a tithe from directed contributions to leadership campaigns, then a $500,000 limit will allow proper national campaigns to take shape, without simply handing the Party to the candidate with the deepest pockets. If this sum seems too rich, I beg to differ. Please remember that it takes a lot of money to raise a lot of money, and if there’s a 20% tithe, plus fundraisers, event hall rentals, promotional advertising for events, etc. etc. then it doesn’t leave very much for prosaic things like travel expenses, and telephone bills. If you think it’s no big deal, the winning campaign will have had to make a bare minimum of 15,000 phone calls. And when’s the last time you had to pay for 30 or 40 train trips, hotel bills, and food for two or three people on the candidates tour?

So here`s what I think we need to know: When will the race officially start and conclude? What will the nomination procedures be? What access, and when will the candidates get access to membership, past membership, and supporter lists? What will the spending limits be, and what tithes and or fees will the Party charge for processing directed contributions? Policy regarding staffers involvement in the race; Will candidates have to resign from existing duties in appointed, or elected roles in the Party hierarchy? I for one will not be impressed to see a deputy leader drawing a salary, and gadding about the country on training tours while actively campaigning. (Neither would some candidates legal council I suspect). Here`s a biggie: Does the Party appoint an interim leader during the race? There`s lots to think about, and it should be done in a timely way. I hope I’m not alone in hoping for a vigorous, and strongly contested race next year. It could be the saviour of the Party in more than one respect.

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Green Party of Canada: Governing council elections, background and picks.

While it is true that I am allergic to council politics, it’s not true that I think it’s irrelevant, or un-important. I just don’t have the patience to unravel the tangle of personal, policy, and parochial conflicts, alliances, and armed neutrality. Over the last 5 years or so, council has been a bit of a revolving door. During the actual Council elections, there are a bare sufficiency of candidates stepping forward. During the actual working year, council sheds members on a pretty regular basis. This results in the ‘losing’ factions retreating to the sidelines to plot their revenge. It’s not a very entertaining prospect to get involved in this cycle, so I have the utmost respect for those people who go into the fray with eyes wide open. On the flip side, there is always a fresh crop of cannon fodder, who don’t realise what they are in for. Someone they sort of trusted told them: ‘Run for council, Elizabeth really needs your support’, or conversely ‘Run for council, we need to stop Elizabeth from controlling everything’. These are the people most likely to throw up their hands in disgust, and resign after a few months. I feel sad for both the individuals, and the Party, as often these are the hardest working organizers, and as often as not they are lost to the Party after they have been used up and thrown away.

In the period between the 2004 election, and the 2005-6 election, much of the conflict was over what to do with the per vote subsidy for Political Party’s. The Leadership, under Jim Harris wanted some serious funding to run the Leaders tour, hire staff, hire consultants, and generally beef up the ‘Hub’ in Ottawa. Much of the Party, especially at the EDA level wanted the revenues to devolve to the Electoral District Associations, to help fund the expansion of the most local units of the Party. Both arguments had significant merit, and the debate was spirited to put it mildly. Ultimately, a Revenue Sharing Agreement was put in place whereby a significant chunk of the vote subsidy was channelled back to the EDA’s, according to a formula taking into account the depth of the EDA executive, the number of members, and the number of votes won in the last election.

It’s not as simnple as it sounds of course. For example, the RSA funds were not supposed to be disbursed until the election debt was paid off. Surprise, surprise the election debt was large, and the Hub got to spend a lot of money in the election, which was subsequently repaid from the subsidy funds. It should really surprise no-one that the fight over how to spend millions of dollars would be hard fought, and that the various constituencies used any number of tools to fight the good fight. The issues have changed a little bit, but it is, and will remain true that the next council will be the arena in which the GPC’s strategic direction, and resource allocation will be decided.

I have my own opinions about what the Party needs to do to become stronger, and to ultimately elect members of Parliament. I guess that my opinions start at that point. The direct route to influence is to elect sitting members of the house. The indirect route to influence is to grow, and earn a significant proportion of the vote at the ballot box. As our vote grows, the incentives for our opponents to win the votes back grow, and they adopt those of our policies that they believe are best in the effort to win their coveted minority government status. EVERYTHING stems from our strength at the ballot box, so that’s where we must focus on winning.

When I paint the broadest strokes of a general election campaign, there are three main elements. The Air War, and the National Campaign, which are the province of council, and the Ground War, which happens at the local campaign level. All three elements are very damned important if we are to become a serious force in parliament. The Air War has to build up a willingness to support the Green Party across the country. That means that there needs to be a coherent strategy to target potential voters with a compelling message. Then the strategy needs to be implemented, and the War Room, (or whatever we want to call it), needs to ensure that the earned, and paid media delivers the compelling message on target.

The National Campaign isn’t just the War Room, and the Leaders media presence. There is also the neccessity to provide a degree of co-ordination between the National Campaign, and the local Campaigns. The Party structure needs to provide a degree of assistance to weaker, inexperienced, or non-existant EDA’s. There are a lot of mechanistic details, like Candidate recruiting, literature design, election sign bulk orders, candidate deposits ensured, liability Insurance coverage, and tons of other legal, and practical requirements co-ordinated. The third element is the local ground war.

The ground war happens locally, and is the ultimate key to electoral success. When the Air War succeeds in delivering the right message, on target, then it becomes the job of the ground war to put the puck in the net, and win the vote on E-Day. While the National Campaign can demonstrably increase the vote by hundreds of thousands, the effectiveness is multiplied many fold by having a strong local Canvas, Candidate, and Campaign to identify and get the new supporters out to vote on E-Day. The Green Party has a growing number of EDA’s that are capable of running an effective ground war. Those EDA’s come out of every election with a larger membership base, and bigger lists of ID’d supporters. In short, they capture, and retain resources with every election. Unfortunately, there are still hundreds of ridings where there is no EDA, or the EDA is too weak in human and monetary resources to do  much good. In those ridings, membership is static, or falling between elections. Lists of ID’d voters get lost, and they have to start all over again with every election.

In the coming council election, I will be supporting candidates who are prepared to focus GPC resources on building capacity for future ground wars. In practice, that means effective field organizing, with measurable objectives like EDA formation, membership recruiting targets, fundraising goals, local earned media impressions, candidate recruitment, etc.

Rob Routledge - BlueGreenBloggers pick

The two candidates for Ontario Rep. are Camille Labchuk, and Robert Routledge.  Rob Routledge is my

Camille Labchuk

pick for Ontario Rep. He has extensive experience as a Field organizer for the Obama campaign, and can speak from experience about building local campaign organizations. I like Camille well enough. She is competent, and has plenty of experience with Air War type issues. She is handicapped by the fact that her mother, Sharon Labchuk is the director of organizing, and I would expect that she will support a continuation of current practices. That doesn’t cut it for me.

There are a whopping 16 candidates for Councilor at Large. There were enough good candidates that I had genuine difficulty deciding on who to vote for.

Mark Taylor wins top pick. I know him well enough to be certain that he will work hard to ensure that Air War, National Campaign, and EDA

organization will all be emphasized in the right degree. My next four picks are as follows: Huguette Allen, Lynne

Champoux-Williams, Rob Ewaschuk,

and Sonny Day. Dan Murray, and Paul Maillet get honourable mentions, and both would make good councilors, but I only have 5 votes, so I had to bump somebody! I was quite surprised to see that my picks exactly mirrored Kersten’s Kolumn picks. This was NOT co-ordinated, so I guess it’s a case of great minds thinking alike.

The two candidates for Manitoba Rep. are Michael Moreau, and Ed Driedger. Michael has helped me with some number crunching for my past blog on the impact of spending on vote outcomes, and he is very much a data driven decision maker. I think he is pretty new to the Party, and provided he doesn’t become disillusioned ‘roadkill’ from council infighting, he will bring some valuable skills to the council table. I do not know Ed, and so I’ll have to say that Michael would get my vote, were I in Manitoba.

The two candidates for Nova Scotia Rep. are Sheila Richardson, and Aaron Victor Podolsky. I will have to leave the pick for the NS membership to make for themselves. I have to confess that I have been pretty embarrassed by the recent performance of the Provincial NS Greens. They got totally shellacked in the Provincial election, and are at the edge of being decertified Provincially, according to media reports. Nova Scotia needs to be grabbed by the ears, and shaken, so please don’t elect an ‘insider’ to be your rep. Vote for somebody who will actually try to build the Party profile, not just a ‘loyal’ vote on council.

For the Territories, the two candidates are Mike Ivens, and Kim Melton. I don’t know either, despite the fact that Mike has been on council for awhile. I’ll reiterate what I said about the Nova Scotia candidates. Make sure it’s not another placeholder you elect!

As for the uncontested positions, I don’t want to go making any negative ‘None of the above’ picks, so I’ll leave it to my readers to qualify, and/or disqualify candidates. In general, if your’ candidate has no history of local organizing, then please do NOT pick them. We don’t need fly-by-night place fillers, or ‘loyal’ councilors, in place to vote as instructed. We need people who can think for themselves, and who will be an asset in our quest to organise the hell out of Canada!

You can cast your e-ballot any time now. I encourage you to do so promptly. With any luck, we’ll have a strong council, prepared to make some tough staffing and budget decisions, that will lead to many more members, EDA’s, and strong local candidates to complement a data driven National Campaign, and Air War.

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