Tuesday evening I attended a pretty successful social event and informal renewal brainstorming session in Toronto with over 100 Liberal Party members … and guess who came to dinner?The Edward Blake Society is an informal group of Toronto area young p…
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A BCer in Toronto: I’m done with witch-hunts and fighting old battles
As an ardent and early supporter of Stephane Dion (still first in my heart) you could argue I should be sympathetic to this line of argument from journalist turned Liberal staffer turned journalist again Mark Dunn, but actually I’m decidedly not.Do we …
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Ok, so what are we voting for exactly?
Liberal Party of Canada members received an e-mail from the national executive yesterday about the leadership timing/constitutional amendment drama that has absorbed the party and the membership since the election. While I applaud the desire to commun…
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Building liberalism beyond the Liberal Party
We’ve been necessarily focused on how to reform, restructure and renew the Liberal Party of Canada, as we should be, but to be successful at refreshing liberalism in Canada and the moderate, pragmatic values we seek to promote and embody, it’s also…
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Reforming the Liberal Party: Who are we, and why are we here?
In my Liberal reform posts so far I’ve focused on questions of leadership and questions of structure. These are important to building the party into an accountable and efficient vehicle, but unless you know where you’re driving to and why you’ll still…
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Members shouldn’t read about constitutional proposals in press leaks
While the decisions made by the Liberal national executive are often questionable, so often it’s more the process than the decision that bothers me the most. That was quite evident with this story today. As the saying goes, what we’ve got here is a fai…
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Reforming the Liberal Party: At the top, part two
On Saturday, I described how a top-down mentality drives the Liberal Party, and why the party needs to be re-oriented to a structure devoted to putting riding associations first and giving local organizations the resources and support they need to grow…
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Reforming the Liberal Party: At the top, part one
In my last reform post I touched on reforming the Liberal Party from a leadership perspective. Today, I’d like to touch on reforms from a party structure, procedure and philosophy perspective.Merger madnessBut first, let me touch on the elephant in the…
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Real change isn’t forced top-down
I’m working on a post in my ongoing Liberal Party reform series, and the theme today is how the mentality of the party is too top-down, instead of bottom-up. When I read this story though I had to pause and comment separately, because I’m fuming and it…
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Renewing the Liberal Party: Leadership
I’m a Canadian first and foremost, and as a Canadian I’m nervous about what Stephen Harper’s Conservatives will do with majority government. That’s not fear-mongering because to do so would be pointless now; it’s how I honestly feel. But as a Liberal,…
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