Thursday, April 30, 2009

Its weird when stuff crosses my desk


The Young Liberals are getting more and more creative.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

been busy lately...

Starting a Rugby program at a school with no Rugby team for 15 years is hard work, and this is taking a toll on my blogging.

Anyways, glad to hear the libs are out of the red!

It will be a fun night tonight at CJPAC, wonder how many of them read my blog??? Guess I can ask? Hey I'm Confessions of a Liberal Mind, who are you?

I will be on full force next week to ramp up to the convention, I might even endorse and support people. What do you think I should do?

-Jamie

Saturday, April 11, 2009

One Member, One Vote, One Crazy Amendment

Let me get this out of the way, I will not be a delegate at the convention in Vancouver this year. I decided to take on the roll as a blogger, and I have even purchased a mini-pc in which to fulfill this role in Vancouver.

The weighted One Member One vote, for the ridings is the best compromise position regarding democracy in the Liberal Party. I would have preferred a straight bare bones version of this amendment with no weighting, but the riding weighting is a fair compromise to properly represent the country as a whole, which the party has not been doing for most of this past decade in both opposition and government.


In examining the Young Liberals of Canada's amendment, my first reaction is that this is a poison pill. This amendment is greedy, undemocratic, and totally elitist. The Young Liberals are very important to the party, but according to those within its ranks only represent about 10-14% of the total population of the party. Giving the group a built in 25% representation would only further give the Young Liberals a self important voice rather than working to have a strong voice through recruiting of more "real" members, rather than signing up their friends to vote in provincial executive races.

Young Liberals play an important part of the party, through their enthusiasm in bringing about progressive policies, but they often play out high school type fights and politics (we should all expect more out of University students), which I myself have taken part in maybe once or twice (regretfully, crazy days of past).

Through all of this, I have heard one voice from the Youth that sounds mature and not entitled. That voice being John Lennard, the Presidential candidate for the YLC. He believes that the Youth need to grow, and double their membership, rather than force a quota on the rest of the party. John shows real maturity and leadership by taking this stand, and also shows that he is committed to the OMOV in its original form.

I hope that this amendment fails, as I have only heard negative responses from senior Liberals I know, and I think the Youth of the party need to do some soul searching into what is best for them and their role in the party. They already have cheap delegate and event fees, and have a great influence in policy through their most awesome level of voluntarism.

Lastly, I've been getting emails from people running for National Exec positions. Its interesting to see the only communication from exec members is during the time they wish to run for a position. Hit me up after you get elected...
-Jamie