Following my post last week raising some concerns about the restriction of voting power around the Liberal policy process leading-up to the Vancouver convention, I was interviewed by Harris MacLeod of The Hill Times. The article ran this morning:
What Mr. Ferguson didn't say, however, is that the votes cast on the En Famille forum are purely "consultative votes," and that whereas at past conventions elected delegates from riding associations across the country voted on which resolutions get sent to the plenary session, this time only the riding and provincial commission presidents get to vote.
"The idea was good in a sense, I'm all in favour of one member, one vote to give more power to the membership, but I think they kind of failed on the implementation of it by then restricting the vote to just the riding presidents and the commission presidents, which of course is a much more restrictive pool of people then if it had been voted on by all of the delegates," said Jeff Jedras, who is a Liberal Party member and writes the blog A BCer in Toronto.
In addition to the results of the En Famille vote, riding association presidents are also encouraged to hold meetings with their membership and canvass Liberals in their ridings about which policies they think should be prioritized and voted on at the plenary session.
Mr. Jedras, who lives in Liberal MP John Cannis's riding of Scarborough-Centre, said he can't speak for other ridings but as far as he knows there has been no such initiative in his riding.
"If the riding presidents take this seriously and they do their job this could work, but you're putting an awful lot of faith in the riding presidents.... Certainly I've not been invited to any consultation meetings or consulted at all as a member at large," Mr. Jedras said.
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