(Policy papers 2012-2013)

We live in a time of cynicism about party politics. The number of dedicated grassroots volunteers prepared to work for parties is dwindling, as Canadians choose other opportunities, many of them online, to build their communities and shape their world. The Liberal Party must welcome much broader participation in choosing authentic and committed candidates. The party needs a strong virtual presence on the Web, and it should join forces with progressive movements and organizations to call Canadians to the polls in elections.

Nous vivons dans une ère de cynisme envers la politique de partis. Le nombre de volontaires issus de la population qui sont enthousiastes et prêts à travailler pour les partis diminue, alors que les Canadiens choisissent d’autres manières, dont beaucoup sur Internet, de construire leur communauté et de façonner leur monde. Le Parti Libéral doit accueillir une participation bien plus large en choisissant des candidats authentiques et dévoués. Le parti a besoin d’une présence virtuelle sur Internet forte et devrait unir ses forces avec les mouvements et organisations progressistes afin d’appeler les Canadiens aux urnes pendant les élections.

*********

For far too many Canadians, joining a political party is to be avoided. Putting yourself on a party list seems to lead only to incessant demands for financial contributions. Membership rarely provides any sense that you are part of an enterprise that can make a difference to the country or your community. People who want to be engaged with their fellow citizens on public issues are more likely now to get online to form instant networks or join the civil society sector: the voluntary organizations that work for change outside of government and business, such as civic associations, unions, faith groups, charities, and issue-specific non-profits.

However, Canadian politics will continue to be organized around political parties for the foreseeable future. Parties are still necessary as vehicles for addressing societal conflict and reconciling competing interests into differing but coherent visions. As long as we have elections and legislatures, it would be wrong to give up on parties altogether. What parties must do is open themselves up, modernize, and reach out to civil society.

Our age of instant communications and social media demands that political parties become accessible to everyone. In the past decade, some positive steps have been taken in that direction. All major parties at the federal level have now embraced a universal vote of the membership to choose their leaders. It’s a vast improvement over the old convention system, which excluded anyone who could not attend — the majority of party members, to say nothing of those outside the party. Changes to fundraising rules mean that corporations and unions can no longer dictate terms to the parties through the superior clout of their donations.

But parties have a long way to go if they wish to halt their precipitous decline in relevance. One area that needs urgent improvement is the process leading up to the selection of candidates for an election.

My first-hand experience with the nomination process within the Liberal Party in 2005 and again in 2008 has convinced me of the need to open up the system level the playing field. Among other things, we could set a single nation-wide date for the opening of all nominations, reform the green-light process with clear criteria for the vetting of candidates, and ensure that all candidates are nominated early enough to maximize their engagement in the community prior to the election.

Reforms to promote broad community engagement in the nomination of national candidates must be complemented by reforms at the parliamentary level. We must rein in the excessive power of the Prime Minister’s Office — its reach has been growing under both Liberal and Conservative governments — and the dominance of party leaders, which has allowed a small clique of party loyalists to reduce most members of Parliament to the role of performing seals.

As Canadians turn away from parties and back to their screens, especially between elections, parties must meet them where they live: in the digital world. Political communication has irrevocably changed, thanks to social networks and technologies like text messaging and blogging. The Liberal Party must increase its online presence and set up a national website similar to the groundbreaking national interactive website that President Obama established during his 2008 campaign.

A party lives or dies by its ability to project principle and purpose — a coherent vision of the kind of country and society we are building together — and to respond to the aspirations of Canadians by setting over-the-horizon goals. The Liberal Party should continually develop and update practical policy positions and post them online.

At the same time, the party must reach out to the many single-issue groups and coalitions that share its vision. Then, during an election, Liberals must persuade them to mobilize their respective followers in support of the party’s candidates.

As civil society groups move to the centre of the political process, their role during elections should no longer be restricted to sending predictable questionnaires to party members and candidates (and getting back equally predictable responses). Civil society groups now have the potential to influence the direction of politics and shape the public agenda, and to expand their activism to everything from the nomination of candidates to the identification of key election issues to endorsing candidates during an election. This changing role will require a relaxation of severe restrictions on advocacy by organizations that are entitled to charitable status. But the Conservative government is taking steps in the opposite direction. The 2012 budget allocates no less than $8 million to audit non-profit groups; they must give the government more information on their political activities, including the extent to which they are financed by foreign sources, supposedly to ensure that not more than 10% of their funding is spent on advocacy.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party are currently much closer than any other party to mastering party politics in the 21st century. The Conservatives are able to rely on narrowly based groups — anti-gun control, anti-immigration abuse, anti-tax, pro-monarchy — whose membership is a dependable source of revenue. In the May 2011 general election, the Conservatives mobilized these supporters to achieve a decisive majority, while neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats could similarly rally the far greater number of progressive Canadians.

For the Liberal Party of Canada to be competitive once again,it must build up solid support among the proliferating communities of like-minded people who want better outcomes in healthcare, less divisive national leadership in the critical areas of energy and the environment, greater respect for Parliament and representative democracy, andmore social infrastructure instead of more prisons.

The following sets out some Proposals for Party Reforms to be considered.

Proposals for Party Reform

Opening up the nomination process

We need to undertake a major reform of the nomination process with the overarching goals of expanding the pool of possible candidates, empowering our Members of Parliament to represent the interests of their constituents more effectively, and making our riding associations the front line in the party rebuilding effort. Some of these reforms can be implemented by the leader of the Party. Others will require constitutional reform, drafted in consultation with the party membership, and approved at the next biennial convention.

1.           We need to open the nomination process.

• A strong MP connected with their community should be able to win their nomination in and open and fair process, and this requirement will ensure they remain connected with their community and their membership. No longer will an MP be able to run a closed or dormant riding association. It will be in their interests to build an active organization to nurture and maintain the support of the membership.
• While we should consider each of our candidates a star, surely we should be able to attract quality, experienced, capable candidates that can win their nomination in a fair, open and transparent process.

II.        It is not enough to just open up nominations. We also need to open up an opaque nomination process that is too open to manipulation by party insiders in favour of a preferred candidate.

• The first change we can implement is predictability. With fixed election dates providing a degree of predictability to the electoral calendar, we should open all nominations in the country on one day, with a set deadline for submitting nominations, and a set deadline for approval of applications. Ideally, we should open up the process well before the next election, to ensure candidates have ample time for a pre-campaign period to build their profile in the community, while recognizing prospective candidates may also have careers that do not allow them to begin campaigning too early.
• We also need to reform the “greenlight” process of candidate nomination review and approval, which has often been used to block candidates not favoured by party insiders. We need clear published rules for candidate qualifications, a set timeline for reviewing the application, a requirement to clearly explain the reasons for any rejection, and a fair and speedy appeal process.

The ability of the leader to refuse to sign a candidate’s nomination papers should only only be used in a last resort situation where a candidate is clearly unqualified and detrimental to the interest of the party.

1.        While an open and transparent process with firm, published deadlines will open the pool of possible candidates we can attract, it is not enough. We need to attract a more diverse field of candidates to seek Liberal nominations that is more reflective of the communities and constituents we seek to represent. Ideas and qualifications, not money, should be the key to securing a nomination. We must ensure much more vigorous ongoing outreach efforts.
2.        Finally, at the same time as removing the protection of the nominations of incumbent MPs, we must expect MPs to stay more connected with and responsible to their constituents. We need to loosen the excess constraints of party discipline and strengthen the all-important role of MPs in representing the interests of their constituents in party and Parliamentary debates, not vice versa.

Obviously, there are certain fundamental principles and philosophies that go to the core of what it means to be a Liberal, and should be shared by anyone who seeks a Liberal nomination. However, on the majority of issues, MPs should be free to vote freely.

Get out of Ottawa

Our party will not be rebuilt and the next election will not be won in the House of Commons. It will be won on the ground, in 338 ridings across the country. Between elections, the leaders should visit each and every one of those ridings.

The leader needs to make getting out of Ottawa a priority, and a cross-country tour should not be a newsworthy novelty – it should be the new normal. We need to bypass the media and go straight to Canadians, in their communities, both to share our Liberal message and to listen and to learn from Canadians about their issues and their concerns.

We need to build the party in every riding, not just in select targets, and our leader should make regular visits to riding associations. The riding associations should set the tone for these visits, advising the leader what would best support their building efforts – a fundraiser, a policy open house, meetings with key stakeholders – the visit should support the riding’s rebuilding plan, not the leader’s office message plan.

Open Politics

Our party took a major step towards opening our doors to Canadians with the creation of the supporter system. In that spirit, we need to open up our policy debate, and follow the example of the first Barack Obama campaign with an open web community to not just discuss, but create and perfect policy.

This cannot be a closed sandbox for party members-only. We should not be afraid to invite all Canadians into our policy discussions, and invite them to participate in policy development. Feeling like they are part of the process can be the first step to getting them more deeply involved. And, to be truly successful, this community cannot just be members (and other citizens) talking among themselves. The party leadership must be fully engaged at the same time.

The leader of the Party should commit to being a regular contributor to this community, answering questions directly and sharing activities and opinions directly, in a special section of the online forum. The caucus should also be required to commit to being active members of this community – each critic should monitor and engage with community members within the forums for their respective critic areas.

This forum alone is not enough. We need to open up other methods of communication with members and supporters. Every email they receive from the party should not be a request for money. We need substantive communications on matters of policy, so that no member is ever wondering what the party position is on a particular issue, or why.

While e-mail and the Internet open up new opportunities for open, two-way communications, it is not enough alone. The leader should commit to regular phone conversations with each of our 338 riding presidents, and designate a staff person in his office as the point-person for communicating with riding presidents, with a service level requiring a response to queries within a set time frame.

Open policy development

Most people do not join a political party because they like licking envelopes. We get involved because we want to help build a better country, and because we believe in certain issues and principles. We join a political party that shares our views and values as a vehicle to help make real, substantive change.

Yet, today, Liberal Party members have no stake in the development of the party platform that we ask them to campaign on and defend in their communities, and with friends and neighbours. How can we ask for their full commitment to an election platform when we shut them out of its creation?

Today, we have a policy process that operates in two independent bubbles. For our members, countless hours of effort and energy are expended creating deeply considered policies in ridings and commission clubs across the country. Members and community members consult, draft a policy, and then lobby to pass a resolution up through the riding association, through PTA prioritization workshops and plenaries and, if they are lucky, through a national biennial workshop and plenary. With more luck, a policy resolution gets approved by the delegates.

And after all that, then what? All the hard work goes into a drawer to be forgotten when, in a separate bubble, the leader appoints trusted lieutenants to write an election platform in an entirely separate, closed, non-consultative process.

This has to change. We need to look at our members as more than loyal foot soldiers during the writ period – we must treat members as partners. While the leader must also have the ability to propose specific policies and craft a platform to address what is considered to be the priorities of the country, the leader must ensure the platform reflects the priorities of our membership and commit to both including more member-created policies in our election platform, and to considering every policy passed by the party membership through a reformed policy process. The leader should prepare a public report to the membership outlining what policies the leader seeks to include or to exclude in the platform, and the reasons why. This must be a transparent process.