"Here is the devil-and-all to pay. "

Okay, Liberal Party.  The time has come.  Rise Up!

Negative-option accountability in the Liberal Party has just got to go.

We do not have a problem with leadership from our Leaders.  We have a problem with leadership period.  Over the years, the vast majority if positions of authority in the Party, from riding presidents, to candidates, to incumbency protected MPs, to Provincial and National Board members to the Revenue Committee, Election Readiness and Campaign Committees and senior officials  - even delegates to most conventions (Big donor? You’re in!), have been acclaimed or appointed to their positions – basically they’ve been installed.

Rather than some great big open air tent, the Party is a bolted-door club house where you have to know both the secret password and the secret handshake to receive entry.  And once inside (if you are smart enough to gain entry) you discover just what a formidable fortress it is: the walls are super thick.  So thick In fact, they’re sound proof.

The only consultation that occurs in the club is “talk amongst yourselves”.

Every now and then, when uprisings amongst the proletariat rear, little bones of reform get thrown their way.  More often than not, however they are snatched away even before their implementation; think Lucy, Charlie Brown and football.  

Over the years in a variety of media and pieces I’ve described how the Liberal Party has tended to honour its constitution in the breach.  When that hasn’t worked, it’s issued odd interpretations, or changed interpretations.  And when that hasn’t worked, it’s changed the Party’s constitution.  Once it even did so retroactively. Yup, retroactively. 

The Great Reform Convention of 1985 ™ removed Senators and members of the appointed Revenue Committee (and other non-elected officials) from the list of ex-officio (automatic) delegates to party conventions.  At the 1990 Conventions (three-in one – a constitutional convention, a biennial convention and a Leadership convention), these positions (in addition to a significant contingent of delegates representing the newly created Aboriginal Commission – a whole other but related story) were added back to the delegation the day before the vote by way of retroactive constitutional amendment.  They registered at the Convention as contingent delegates and left as full voting delegates having exercised that vote to boot.

And then there is the 2008/09 “Leadership process”... don’t get me started (although you can read about it here and here).

The Party’s been through enough.  It has been repeatedly reported and rumoured over the past week,  the Party Board is proposing another similar process without a proactive consultation of the full membership.  For me a feeling of "sentiment" is not consultation and is not accountability. Is someone is going to finally be called up to pay up?

"Spare your breath to cool your porridge." II

Interim or permanent.  Where does the twain meet on leadership?

If the interim leadership of the Liberal Party is going to turn into the ipso facto Leadership of the party for several years, there’s a whole different set of criteria and questions that need to be addressed.  An interim ‘mandate’ of stewardship in the House of Commons with a side glance to the Senate is completely different than the type of mandate a Party gives to its Leader after a race that encompasses a whole host of positions. 

As a member of the Party, under normal circumstances, I might ask the potential interim leader:

• What kind of deportment do you see your MP’s exhibiting?
• Given the seats we won and the platform we put forward who will you put on which committee and which will you place the most priority on?
• What will be the general focus of the issues you will raise in the House: issues of the day, or positions from the election platform?
• How will you work with the National Board to ensure that members’ voices are heard by Caucus and taken into consideration?
•  How will you ensure that Liberal voices from non-held ridings are heard in the House and the Senate?
•  How will you prepare the discussion that needs to be held between the Caucus and the membership on the future of the Party? What type of mechanisms for consultation will you propose?

Note that none of these really involve the potential interim leader’s positions on substantive issues, party values or principles that would normally guide discussions.  They are very stewardship in their orientation.

If given the opportunity, I would think members would like to ask the potential Leader:

• What are the values you think Liberals share; how many of these and which are unique to the Liberal Party?
• What will you view and/or accept as your mandate from the Party to accomplish and in what time frame(s)?
• What are the steps you will take to rebuild the Party?
• What are your short, medium and long term goals in this regard?
• What is the relationship you envision between the Parliamentary wing of the Party and the membership; who makes which type of decisions and why?
• What is the relationship you envision between the Party and the electorate/citizenry
• How do you propose to achieve gender balance in all of the structures and organizations of the Party?
• The Liberal Party is a federation of provincial organizations. Do you think this structure remains appropriate in the current communications era? How do you view the relationship(s)?
•  As per above, what are your proposals for efficient use of LPC resources?
• How do you view policy and platform development in the Party? What roles and what responsibilities should be assigned to each level/position?
• What are your views on the collaboration between parties at various points in the electoral and governing  process? 
• What are your views on our electoral system?
• Should we be examining our various political processes in conjunction with each other; i.e. electoral, election-procedural; campaign and party financing; party-exclusive; parliamentary; constitutional and conventional? 
• How can we ensure accountability at various levels in the Party?

I've got my own ideas on most of these, but I’m guessing that many other people also have a different set or subset, but nonetheless these are the types of things we should be looking at.  And, I continue to think that these are not mutually exclusive activities, but should be enacted by exclusive individuals.

It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued"

Let’s elect a steward as the Party’s next Leader. 

We’ve got a lot to do to rebuild and one of those things, an important one but not the only one is to pick a new Leader.  Let’s not once again over-inflate the critical nature of this choice by trying to get around process. We have too nasty a legacy of that as it is.  The precedents aren’t pretty.

For years, I’ve been arguing that the Liberal Party has placed too much emphasis on the personal characteristics of our Leaders and not enough on their values.  After all I’ve argued, when we choose our leaders at whatever level, we should be seeking those that best articulate our shared values, not those who make them up for us and then deliver them to us.   

For years the membership was ignored or bypassed while the views of donors and outside experts were sought first or exclusively.  Members were told to wait, anxious and drooling for the platform tablets to be delivered from the mount. Very few discussions were held on policy matters at the riding level, and in recent times, not even at the national level.  Conventions were rah-rah affairs, scripted and too expensive for average people with thoughts to share to actually participate.

Some of us suggested that we shouldn’t be discussing policy specifically, certainly by way of policy resolutions at Conventions anyway.  What we should be discussing are our values and belief structure in a modern context and providing a prioritized subset of those to the Party’s leadership to go away and craft a platform and programs with, and then come back for some sort of ratification.  

In other words, the Party should be providing a mandate to its leadership, not the other way around. These discussions, consultations and ratifications would be ongoing and regular, assisted greatly by today’s technologies and social media.  The Leader and the caucus would of course continue to provide leadership on most issues of the day, but they would benefit from the guidance provided by the party; by a more intimate relationship so to speak.  The same is most certainly true with respect to the important organizational and structural matters facing the Party.

This type of process would have stood us in much better shape if for example we had used it to discuss democratic notions such as coalitions and pre-election cooperation, together and consensually as a party. 

It could serve us decently now, if the Party executive, who are after all supposed to be accountable to us the membership - the people who “elected” them - deigned to ask us our thoughts and seek some guidance on the choice of an interim leader.  After all, the caucus only makes a recommendation.  The people decide.

I think that most Liberals agree on changing the relationship and taking more control, but are now saying that we should wait to have this discussion “amongst ourselves” before entering into a leadership race to determine who best could take this sort of direction from the Party.  Not so much wait to have the discussion I guess as to put the selection of a new permanent leader off while we do this work.  

There are no saviours after all.  That I agree with.  But aside from the fact that my reading of the party process doesn’t allow for this – and I would hope that we have learned that adherence to the process does matter; after all it is hard to argue about prorogations and contempt in Parliament and then turn around and dis your own party’s processes just because you disagree with them due to unanticipated circumstances – I don’t think the party will ultimately benefit from a lengthy interim leadership. Lengthy periods of interim leadership tend toward lengthy and divisive periods of pseudo leadership races, and interim Leaders, even though they have all of the powers of permanent leaders tend to focus more on caucus leadership and less on the organizational side.  Where I might concede on the process side of this discussion is if the full party was consulted in some sort of vote or guiding straw vote, as alluded to above.

Tom Axworthy has argued quite eloquently for some of the things the party needs to do and the length of time that may be required to do it, and concluded that a side benefit of waiting until a year before the election to choose our new leader, will be less time for their “demonization”.  Many, many others are echoing those thoughts, primarily on the rebuilding front.  I tend to think that we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and that we will be better off doing this work alongside any candidates, having deliberative discussions with them instead of making them debate themselves seeking divergence and division as the determinant of intelligence or leadership ability.  They’re Liberals too.  Presumably they share our values, and what we should be seeking from the “race”, is as I say a determination of who best articulates them. Then we work together on a jointly developed plan in a networked organization. 

Also, are we so sure that the other parties will be able to demonize every single person capable of leading the party that we need to shyly bring them in at the "end"? Maybe the problem has been as Tom says that we have elected those leaders with the expectation or their own stated goal of becoming Prime Minister as the sole raison d’être of their leadership. If the one we elect has pledged to rebuild the party in a collaborative way, why would they be pressured to leave if they didn't win? Pearson didn't leave after one loss or even two.  He was a steward.

The biggest thing the party needs to do is to define its sense of purpose.  We need to do this together.

---

When the head aches, all the members partake of the pain

Why Michael Ignatieff will have to give up the leadership of the Liberal Party.

Last night Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff seemed to know what needs to be done in the Party's best interests when he said: "I will play any part that the party wishes me to play as we go forward to rebuild, to renew, to reform the vital centre of Canadian politics. I will serve as long as the party wants to make me serve or asks me to serve and not a day longer."

While some Liberals debate just how long and under what circumstances that continuing service might be, the Leader is really boxed by the realities of process.  No doubt, more important is the question of moral authority, but over the years the Party has gradually moved to put in place some checks on the misguided reading of that authority.

The plain facts of it are that Mr. Ignatieff failed to win a seat and it will be four years before another one may open up.  He cannot lead the Party for long even as a medium term measure without a seat in the House of Commons and there is not one out of the 34 we've got that could or should be risked in a resignation-based by-election.  That would be blatantly contrary to the democratic will just expressed, in both the positive and negative senses.  In other words, there would be no moral authority to support either action.  Everyone likely agrees this is just not on.

So why couldn't he just wait a while to resign, say a year or so? This is where the process kicks in.

When the election was called the Party rescheduled its Biennial Convention originally scheduled for June to mid-December, on virtually the last date that the Constitution allows for the holding of said Convention. It has to be held within two calendar years of the last convention which was held in May of 2009, so December 2011 it is. 

The Constitution also says that at the first Convention following an election at which the Leader fails to become Prime Minister, an automatic review vote or "endorsement ballot" will be conducted.  All well and good one might say, he can hang in until that Convention and face the music there, perhaps bringing a plan for rebuilding the party to the party for discussion and ratification.  

Problem with that (and there are many more) is that the review vote is actually conducted well before the Convention - by all members at the delegate selection meetings held between about one and two months before the Convention itself, in other words in September and October.  Mr. Ignatieff will not win that vote and the Party should not be wasting its energies fighting a review battle or even simply going through the motions of conducting a review process at any rate when it needs to get on with rebuilding. 

Nonetheless, if he chose to option his right to that vote, and he loses it, a vacancy is created immediately. On the spot. A Leadership will have to be held by mid-June 2012 and an interim Leader chosen.  The ironic result of that? An ipso facto year-long Leadership battle in two stages.

The Liberal Party knows full well how harmful and  divisive lengthy (or endless) Leadership battles are.  That's one of the reasons Leadership votes must now be conducted within 6 months of a resignation or intention to resign.

The experience of the recent Leadership race that selected Christy Clarke as Leader of the BC Liberal Party (they have the same one-member-one vote process that their Federal cousins now have too) should be a positive lesson for Liberals.  Swift and surgical, with minimum bleeding.  In fact an amazing ability to bring in new blood.

The Party may be surprised at just how many Canadians are actually prepared to help rebuild the Party having participated in giving us the breathing room to do so.

So, the only logical route for Mr. Ignatieff and the Party to take is for him to announce his intention to resign when the Party chooses his successor.  The Party should then set the date for the Convention it must have this year for late October/ early November, and conduct its Leadership balloting over the same weekend, and the Party can give its new Leader a proper mandate.

"It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued"

As my very first post on this blog a couple of years ago attested, Peter Russell has been inspirational.

I repeat:

“Spare your breath to cool your porridge.”

Way back in 1992 I participated in negotiations with the Broadcasting Arbitrator (who?) as the Liberal Party’s representative to statutory “negotiations” on the divvying up of broadcast minutes for a future election.  These meetings in the past had been completely perfunctory, but this time, there was a twist.  Well several actually.  We had a new arbitrator, number one. Number two, we had a(nother) new political party flexing its (national) muscles: Refooooorm!  And, number three, these were the first negotiations conducted since the multi-million-multi-year Lortie Commission on Electoral Reform (sic) and Party Financing had delivered a four volume report upon which the government had yet to act (and frankly never did).

Here’s what was interesting about these negotiations (aside from being scrummed for the very first time).  No one really knew this, or rather I should say few were cognizant of this, but at the time the Canada Elections Act, which barely recognized and contained no effective definition of a political party, nonetheless contained references to a formula upon which advertising minutes would be divided amongst the various parties. 
 Basically (I’m doing my best to simplify, so no one jump down my throat for the generalities) the Act recognized that broadcasting (television and radio) were the primary media upon which political parties could get out a message fairly universally to all citizens, but also that these were expensive mechanisms and so an element of fairness should be inserted into the electoral process to ensure that those who had the money couldn’t simply over-buy the airwaves (sound familiar?). 
In other words, to provide a bit of a level playing field.  Keep in mind that while we had quite a number of political parties back then (around 12 if memory serves me), there were only three (ok! I’m leaving out Creditistes) that had ever participated in crafting and amending the Act and its provisions and also which had ever formally participated in these negotiations. So they were really only interested in the playing field amongst themselves.

Soooo, the Act said that the arbitrator needed to meet with the parties to divvy up at total of 390 minutes (6.5 hours) of paid advertising time. “Free time” advertising would be allocated based on the “agreement” on paid time.  In place was a statutory formula for the divvying up of these minutes and if the parties couldn’t agree, the Arbitrator would decide. In keeping with the above-mentioned, the Arbitrator had never had to well, arbitrate; everyone (the big three) always agreed on the formula’s outcome. No Question Asked.

The formula, bless its little soul, used for the allocation of paid time was based largely on the application of factors that gave equal weight to the percentage of seats in the House of Commons and the percentage of the popular vote obtained by each of the registered parties in the previous general election, and half-weight to the number of candidates endorsed by each of the registered parties as a proportion of all candidates so endorsed. So, if that lost you – read it again – you will note it is based on previous performance – including, but not exclusive to the number of or even having a seat in the House of Commons. In short, it was was based on some principles.

Sooo, I, the little Opposition party person arrive at the usually sleepy meeting of party reps and who’s there, but The Media, yeah, THE MEDIA, and the REFORM Party – those upstarts – they joined our private little meeting, AND THEY CALLED THE MEDIA!!! After we all calmed down and the Arbitrator explained everything we got down to business.  But a lot of the business wasn’t what everyone expected.  We chatted a lot about public opinion and not a lot about democracy or equality of opportunity in the democratic process, but, I digress – or do I?

The Reform Party rep – actually a good man and a good political friend to this day, began by challenging, as had his party in court, the application of the provisions, which, without doing the math, one could see would diminish their relative weight, simply because of the paucity of seats they held in the House, and the number of seats they had run candidates in, even though they had performed relatively well on popular vote in the ’88 election.  At one point he mused that because his party was at 18% in public opinion polls; his party should be allocated 18% of the advertising minutes.  Being in opposition at the time and really, really badly in opposition to boot, I jokingly shot back that we, the Liberal Party, should then get 35% of the time because that’s where we stood at that very minute in the polls (even though we were little munchkins in terms of our relative weight in the house). 

The Tories (real Wheatbix Tories they were in those days too) really didn’t know what to make of all of this.  Their performance in the last election meant that they were entitled to well over 50% of the available prime time minutes, but everyone and I mean everyone (cause remember, my party had been in a majority situation before) knew that even though it was impossible without busting the expenditure limit several times over to purchase prime time advertising to a limit on each station in the country, you agreed to the allocation in order to hoard minutes so no one else could use them.

Soo, the little opposition person with nothing to lose and a democratic bent fomented from the Lortie hearings just ended, offered that piddling as they were, the Liberal Party would be prepared to “donate” some of its minutes to the emerging parties, because it would be good for the public debate, on the basis of the principles of the statutory formula (combination weight of % seat in the House, % of popular vote and proportion of candidates run).

The Arbitrator (with some edification by the courts admittedly) agreed that the allocation formula had a discriminatory effect which tended to favour the existing parties at the expense of new or emerging parties. He concluded that the statutory factors as applied to allocation “unduly fettered the ability of emerging parties to purchase enough time to make a meaningful case to the Canadian public”. So, two thirds of the time was allocated using the statutory factors and the remaining one third was allocated equally among all the registered parties. The result of this, as was put at the time a “hybrid” approach, was to significantly increase the time allotted to smaller parties, while continuing the predominant weight given to previous performance of “successful” parties. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a great Canadian compromise.

So fast forward to today’s debates about “the Debate”. It’s a debate that encompasses several similar parameters.  It discusses legitimacy for inclusion as witnessed or contemplated through previous performance and public expectations or increasingly importantly sentiment.  Some, but not all of these principles are being discussed. If you really think about they are challenging our tenets and precepts.  

We used to do that behind closed doors and without formal change. But when the public is involved it is often hidden too.  That’s called convention. But it is really about vested interest. In Canada, even though we’ve been given a lot of opportunity, it’s rarely called public intervention or public legislation.  For some reason, we prefer to let convention – for have no mistake, that is what Elizabeth May, when she speaks of opportunity, or Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, when they yearn for one-on-ones are talking about.

For sure. Let’s have a discussion in this election about who should be included in a debate. But could we please have the bigger discussion about why? And what’s fair? And what’s in the public’s interest? And a better definition of a national party? And how we should codify it? And most important of all, on what bases?

Every election, we seem to discuss what is in the perceived interest of the various parties, because we think that is what ultimately is in our own interests.  And then we hear that so rarely are our elections about something. Or something real.  When might we have a debate – in an election - about how we want to be and how we should be represented? In an election that people are already calling a Senfeld Election – an election about nothing, why don’t we turn it into an election about something that counts?

"They can expect nothing but their labour for their pains."

Herewith, my op-ed on women's progress in the Canadian political area, published on International Women's Day in the Ottawa Citizen:

Women's (lack of) progress through the decades

By Sheila Gervais, Ottawa Citizen March 8, 2011 5:24 AM

I am feeling my, um, demographics in this week that we mark the 100th International Women's Day. I'm a first-generation, middleaged, mixed-race, Canadian woman who has yet to see gender balance (note the politesse in this term; it's as if gender equity is just too unattainable, or perhaps too scary) in any legislative body in her country, in her lifetime, so far.

I'm feeling it, frankly, in a year when women elsewhere are making a difference in decision-making -where as we are told by Naomi Wolf in the Globe and Mail there is a feminist revolution happening in the Middle East, and that women have been courageously leading the way in Egypt, and also that while the circumstances in Afghanistan are increasingly challenging for women, there is nonetheless a greater percentage of women in the Afghan parliament than in Canada's.

And that's in this year, 2011.

All of a sudden it strikes me that years ending in "1" have some sort of significance for women. Well Canadian women at least.

Not always positive significance, but significance, nonetheless. It was 90 years ago, in 1921, that the first woman, Agnes McPhail was elected to the House of Commons, stating about her reasons for running and representing, "I want for myself what other women want."

Geesh. Who the heck wouldn't want that, regardless of just exactly what it was they wanted represented?

Especially when, no doubt and everywhere, gender is the only natural 50/50 split that exists. Interestingly and surprisingly timely, among other things, McPhail was an early advocate for prison reform.

Go figure.

It was 40 years ago, in 1971 (following the report of the Royal Commission a year earlier) that the first Minister of the Status of Women was appointed and 10 years after that in 1981 that the first female (and there have only been women since) Minister Judy Erola, was appointed, and not coincidentally that equality entered our Constitution.

And, thank goodness.

In the election after Judy became Minister, our ranks rose to a whopping 9.6 per cent of the elected House. By the time the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (Lortie Commission) reported in 1991 (a mere 20 years ago) we had pretty much doubled -a major and unmarked milestone -achieving 13.4 per cent in the election of 1988.

Taking a timeout to remark on the Lortie Commission's recommendations and legacy in this regard is warranted, particularly given the "1" year of the report. It just seems to take decades for change to occur in Canada, while elsewhere, it occurs at breakneck speed -(sigh, I digress).

The Commission had examined circumstances related to elections and representativeness around the globe and included proposals for increasing equity in the Can-adian Parliament based on those experiences and accomplishments. It noted, for example, how some countries that had already achieved gender balance had 40/40 rules: both women and men had to be represented to the level of 40 per cent.

In addition to other important incentive-mechanisms, the report recommended a regime that would kick in, in the next election, should "equitable" gender representation not reach 20 per cent in the House of Commons by the election following its tabling.

In simple terms, what Lortie recommended was that parties receive an increased reimbursement (or public subsidy) based on the numbers, proportionately, of women that they elected.

It recommended that this regime stay in place for at least two elections following the 20-per-cent achievement.

Readers should note that the generally accepted "rule" is that gender-based decision-making is impacted when a (national) legislature reaches what is called a critical mass; the UN sets this at one-third or between 30 and 33 per cent. At the election following the Report (1993) Canadians did indeed elect more women to Parliament, but missed the Commission's target by two percentage points and elected 18 per cent women.

The results since then, without the adoption of most of the Lortie Commission recommendations related to gender balance, or otherwise, are as follows: 1997: 20.6; 2004: 21.1; 2006: 20.8; and, 2008: 22.1.

It is accepted internationally that achieving gender balance makes changes in decision-making in national legislatures. Examples abound, but in South Africa, for example, where the 30-percent threshold has been exceeded, women legislators introduced gender-based analysis into the national budget process; studies in Costa Rica indicate that female representatives have an 80-per-cent success rate in getting legislation introduced and passed compared to a 48-per-cent success rate for men; and in Rwanda -usually at or near the top in gender balanced national legislatures -laws prohibiting women from inheriting land have been repealed.

Canada clocks in at around 50th place in terms of female representation in the world's national legislatures, depending on the year. So on the 10th anniversary of the founding of Equal Voice, a non-partisan organization dedicated to achieving gender balance in Canadian institutions, in this year 2011, where the power of women is making itself the power of the world and when Canadians are likely to elect a new government, how likely am I, given my demographic, to finally be represented?

Sheila Gervais, a former national director of the Liberal Party of Canada, sits on the Equal Voice advisory committee. She has written extensively on political party development and gender and politics.

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