The half-bold, half-timid Liberal Party Convention

There are three primary lessons from this Convention.

First, the Liberal Party of Canada is well on the way to a renewal that will stun Stephen Harper (who believes he has hammered in the final nail on its coffin with the elimination of direct public political party funding), and disconcert the NDP when they discover that they are being nudged aside as a party of protest.

Second, the amendments to the party's constitution show that the LPC is half-bold, half-timid, with a rump of party members who long for the old days of Liberal ascendancy without effort on our part, and fear changes in structure that mean the future is uncertain at best and perilous at worst.

Third, the results and the voting patterns at the Convention demonstrate yet again that in the age of social media (internet, twitter, facebook, iPads – you name it), conventions that do not involve substantially more party members and supporters in setting the agenda, proposing and adopting policies and constitutional changes, are antiquated, ill-equipped for the modern age, and lack legitimacy.

Let's look at the amendments to the party's constitution that passed:

The powerful changes to the fundamentals of the LPC are the incorporation of good business practices – the annual plan; the driving of the plan down to constituency level; the setting up of a Liberalist with teeth, able to do the job properly and match (and beat!) the Harper new Conservatives; the admission of supporters to vote on leader selection.

These changes are going to be the ones driving the LPC in its triumphal resurgence to the party Canadians trust most to govern this sprawling, compassionate, beleagured, energetic and stable country of ours.

We WILL fix our finances.

We WILL both plan and provide supporters with access to our progress in achieving our annual plans.

We WILL resuscitate the dead electoral associations in the 80 plus ridings.

Now for the bad news – the significant constitutional amendments that did NOT pass.

A good summary of the problem timidity caused at the convention is this, from A BCer in Toronto:

On the other side is an equally impressive list of actions delegates took to timidly embrace the status quo and avoid taking power from the leadership for themselves. Delegates rejected a plan to end the leader’s ability to veto any policy developed by the membership they don’t like. The leader can still appoint all the candidates they want. A total ban on appointments wasn’t on the table, and even a compromise proposal to limit appointments to 20 was rejected. A “ballot initiative” proposal to allow any Liberal to put a constitutional amendment or policy on the agenda at a national convention if they can gather the support of 5000 members, bypassing the need to get the support of a provincial wing or party commission, was rejected. Delegates even rejected an amendment to allow them to set their own rules of procedure for conventions.

There was also a balancing on the supporter front. After welcoming supporters to vote for party leader, delegates rejected letting supporters help pick local riding candidates. And the leadership race will happen across the country on one weekend, not over successive weeks in a series of rolling regional votes.

And the failed amendments are:

However, the problem this list of failed amendments reveals is that our elected MPs still believe there are two classes of citizens in the Liberal Party of Canada: them and us.

This elitist attitude is shown by the clear reluctance of the parliamentary part of the party to allow members and supporters any control over what the Caucus might deem to be policies worthy of inclusion in the election platforms, and the reluctance to put limits on the ability of the Leader and Caucus to parachute in candidates of their choosing and veto policies passed by majorities at conventions.

Alfred Apps was right when in his background paper to the Roadmap for Renewal the argument was made for more direct involvement of members and supporters in both deciding on policies and ensuring that their voices are heard and respected.

When we consider that substantially more convention attendees voted on the marijuana proposal than bothered to vote on the use of a primary for electing our leaders, we can see part of the problem.

When the most that can pass with respect to electoral reform is the preferential vote system to replace our achaic and undemocratic first past the post system (and with no meaningful debate on the virtues of proportional representation), then we see that our leaders and our representatives at the convention are more timid than Liberal supporters in general.

Only by allowing supporters and members to place items on the agenda, and participate electronically in discussing such items and voting for them, will our party have finally overcome its appalling archaism, and start remedying our internal democratic deficits.

Members and supporters should pay particular attention to the willingness of candidates who seek election as the permanent leader in 2013, to support remedying our internal democratic deficits and the deficits in our electoral systems.

Any candidate who avoids discussing these issues and committing to meaningful and immediate reform should by bypassed. It would be better to take a chance on a relatively unknown candidate then to be locked into having as leader someone who believes in first and second class citizenship for Liberal Party MPs on the one hand and the rest of us on the other.

So the message of the Ottawa convention is that it was a good start, but only a start. We have a heckuva way to go to become a democratic party, worthy of being elected as the government of our country.

A Thank You to Alfred Apps

I have not always agreed with Mr Apps on how things were run during his presidency (especially on the ruling that to me seemed to deprive any member who wanted to be an interim leader of his or her rights under the constitution to run for permanent leader).

All Liberal Party members and all Canadians owe Mr Apps appreciation for the dramatic change he and his colleagues have brought about in Liberal Party affairs during the past few months since our May 2011 debacle.

Mr Apps presented to Liberal Party members a Roadmap for Renewal that had some solid, bold and inspiring ideas as to how to reform our party.

And he added an extraordinary background paper, filled to the brim with fascinating facts, challenges, speculation and analyses.

These two documents kickstarted a process which will inevitably lead to a reinvigorated Liberal Party, and the replacement of the sad, idea-less Harper new Conservatives come the next election.

For being so bold in ideas, so provocative in challenges, and so informative in outlining the issues, I thank you.

You have done your party and your country a valuable service.

Two Resolutions that deserve to pass at the LPC Convention

I would like to recommend that attendees at our convention pass two revolutions which are aimed at empowering Liberal Party members and supporters.

The two resolutions are:

AMENDMENTS PROPOSED BY THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA (BRITISH COLUMBIA)

25. Liberal members’ initiative Proposed amendment: 

That the Constitution be amended to include the following initiative:

(a) The members proposing such discussion or amendment (the "Proposing Members") shall register their Liberal Members' Initiative (“LMI”) with the LPC; 

(b) The Proposing Members shall have the right to use, at no expense, the software provided by the LPC, for the purpose of attracting support from Liberal Members and Supporters ("Party Voters") for the launching of the proposed LMI;

(c) if support is obtained from more than 5,000 Party Voters from 20 different EDAs, the LMI shall be added to the agenda at the next Convention for discussion;

(d) For any LMI which seeks to amend the Constitution, at least (i) 25% of all Members of the Party must have voted in favour of the LMI, AND (ii) 50% plus 1 of the votes cast by all Party Voters must have supported that LMI; and

(e) The Party Executive shall implement the provisions for the specific procedures and conditions required for such an initiative.

26. Inclusion of priority policy resolutions in Party Platform

Proposed amendment:  

That the LPC amend its Constitution to provide that a minimum of three (3) Priority Resolutions of the most recent Convention be included in the next Election Platform of the LPC.

CalgaryGrit has backed supporting resolution 26.

However, both resolution 25 and 26 would provide for greater membership participation in setting policies for the Party, and both should be passed.

Resolution 25 is modeled on a similar constitutional provision of the Liberal Party of Alberta, but lacks the same teeth as the Alberta provision but is better than nothing. The Alberta provision requires the adoption of at least 2 of the top 3 policy resolutions passed at the party convention. This means members can ensure that 2 of their top 3 actually find their way into the party's election platform.

Now that is powerful!

Resolution 25 would incorporate into our constitution the ability of members to have input on what is discussed at conventions, and to change the constitution if enough votes are gathered.

This is similar to the European Parliament's Eurpean Citizen Initiative (ECI), which is being launched this year.

It would be a welcome extension of Liberal members rights and powers.

Let's pass both resolutions 25 and 26 and help remedy our internal democratic deficits.

Liberal Party Policies: Problems with Proposed Amendments

The list of proposed amendments to the LPC Constitution has been released. There is a disconnect between the statements in the Roadmap to Renewal and the background paper regarding the need to remedy the democratic deficit in the LPC, and advocating boldness in doing so, and the proposed amendments. Hat tip to Paper Dynamite Online for the reference!

Two classes of citizens – Ordinary members and Caucus members:

There are some improvements proposed in how the party policy will be established, but the proposals still create a two-class citizenship.

Members of the party have limited rights to require that policies a majority of members agree upon, become part of the election platform.

The proposed amendments still give the first-class members (those who are elected as MPs or appointed as Senators) greater rights than the thousands of ordinary members.

The Caucus is still given the right to disregard the policies which the majority of members might have chosen to be the policies of the party. The Caucus is reserving the right to itself to junk those policies and run the election on policies of its own choosing.

So much for engaging Canadians in the political process!

The reservation of rights to the Caucus is found in clause 66 of the amendments, which reads as follows (my redlining and underlining):

(9) Any policies adopted during a plenary session at a biennial convention shall

become priority policies of the Party until the next biennial convention. The

National Policy Chair is responsible to advocate for the Caucus to support priority policies of the Party and advocate for the inclusion of priority policies of the Party in the platform of the Party.

Note the language – the National Policy Chair must "advocate" the inclusion of priority policies of the Party in the platform.

And if the Caucus decides to thumb its collective nose to these policies agreed upon and prioritized by the ordinary members, then they can do so without any explanation and as often as they wish!

Attempt to Empower ordinary Members frustrated:

The Liberal Party of Canada (BC) tried to remedy the democratic deficit in policy making for the elections by requiring that the Caucus be obliged to  include in the party election platform three of the prioritized policies voted on by party members.

However, the concept has been gutted in the proposed Amendment clause 26, which reads as follows:

26. Inclusion of priority policy resolutions in Party Platform

Proposed amendment: That the LPC amend its Constitution to provide that a minimum of three (3) Priority Resolutions of the most recent Convention be included in the next Election Platform of the LPC.

The BC proposal was to copy the Liberal Party of Alberta constitutional amendment by having at least 2 of the top 3 prioritized resolutions decided upon at the convention, be included in the party election platform. The Leader and Caucus could choose which two of the top three they wanted to include, and could reject ONE (and only one) of the Top Three.

How to Fix the Bust:

The BC proposal was meant to have at least three of the top five prioritized policies in the party election platform.

By not including this concept (3 of the top 5) in the wording of amendment 26, the Leader and Caucus will be free to disregard the prioritization of policies agreed upon at conventions under amendment 66. So if there is a list of 30 policies, all ranked in priority from Priority One to Priority Thirty by attendees at the Convention, the Caucus could choose the bottom 3 and meet the requirements.

This nonsense (if it is deliberate and not a mistake) must be changed – the requirement should be that at least three (3) of the top five (5) priority policies are to be included in the election platform. It would be up to the Caucus to choose which 3 of the top 5 to include; the Caucus could, of course, include all five.

Some good reasons for supporting Brian Topp

If he really introduced proportional representation, then he would be a revolutionary prime minister, and go down in history as one of the great ones:

Make no mistake: with Brian Topp at the helm, a vote for the New Democratic Party in 2015 will be a vote for change.

The so-called front-runner indicated in a recent interview the first thing he would do is introduce a "Parliament Act" to "curb the power of the prime minister."

That includes getting to work immediately on some of the biggest constitutionally significant proposals the NDP has in its arsenal: abolishing the Senate, introducing proportionality into Canada's electoral sys-tem and limiting the powers of the prime minister to prorogue Parliament when faced with a confidence vote.

Let's hope that all the candidates for leadership of the NDP commit publicly during the election campaign for such leader to honour and implement immediately the NDP proportional representation policy, whether the NDP forms the majority government in 2015, OR IS PART OR A COALTION GOVERNMENT that replaces Harper's new Tories (a more likely result).

And let's hope that all candidates who run for permanent leader of the Liberal Party of Canada do likewise regarding a commitment to implement proportional representation if the LPC forms or is part of the next government.

Canadians have a right to have their democratic deficits removed by their prime ministers.

How the UK PM David Cameron blew the EU negotiations

 

This summary of the incredible ineptitude of the Cameron Downing Street team comes from the Financial Times.

Cameron lecturing the EU on the City's rights ...

It seems that the Cameron rushed in, like fools, where angels should fear to tread:

Neither Mr Cameron nor his advisers appeared to grasp, in advance of the summit, how spectacularly a last-minute attempt to exploit the eurozone’s debt crisis to extract regulatory concessions for the City of London would backfire on Britain. In everyone else’s eyes, the point of the summit was to approve swift, forceful steps for preventing the eurozone’s collapse – a scenario with immeasurable consequences for the world economy.

The summit was not about granting more opt-outs to a nation that had no intention of joining the eurozone and, in other respects, is semi-detached from the EU. Still less was the summit about helping Britain to throw a protective cloak around its financial services sector, which mainland European opinion holds responsible for detonating and prolonging the world financial crisis of 2008...

Instead, he waited until the summit to present his fellow leaders with the detailed British demands... As the colourful English expression has it, Mr Cameron was done like a kipper.

Just goes to show that being smart does not mean you know what you're doing.

We've seen other instances of Cameron's arrogance and tin ear causing grief, such as his dismissal of the Lib-Dems preferential vote system change (which means there will not be a replacement coalition between the Lib-Dems and Tories after the next election), and the ramming through of drastic austerity measures instead of a more nuanced series of reductions, with emphasis on job protection and growth as well as debt reduction.

Makes on think of Ottawa right now, eh?

The Eurocrisis – A Gallic snub, No Haircuts & More Stability Funds

What a dramatic few days we have just lived through!  The grandest experiment in modern history – the European Union – has weathered a major threat to its existence, with 27 governments gathering in Brussels, and 26 agreeing on a roadmap for future stability and closer fiscal union.

And the one country that is half-in and half-out of the Union smacking down its veto to prevent a full treaty incorporating terms the other 26 have agreed upon, and walking off in a huff, hoping it has protected its major industry.

Cameron's fight to save the City's role:

David Cameron tried to save London's position as the pre-eminent financial centre (some 80% of all financial transactions flow through the City); he gambled on the veto stopping any erosion of the City's clout, and returned home hoping he had achieved this aim.

But he has failed to save London.

The chances are very high that Cameron will be back at the table, prepared to accept restrictions on the flow of funds in the form of new capital requirements on banks, and a financial transaction tax (a variant of the famous Tobin tax, whose time has come at last).

But if Cameron is wise, he will pick up some of The Cat's suggestions set out below in order to ensure that the financial transaction tax is a worldwide one. London's fear is that if the financial transactions tax is applied only in the EU, then dealers will flee to places (like the USA) where the tax does not apply, and the bulk of financial business will move from London to New York.   

Cameron approaches Sarkozy ...

This is a valid fear,  but Cameron can overcome it with The Cat's ideas, provided the UK PM gets another set of advisors (his current lot blew it big time in Brussels).

Sarkozy snubs Cameron – the handshake avoidance waltz:

A video shows Cameron approaching Sarkozy, hand outstretched, Sarkozy weaving to one side and ignoring the proffered hand, and Cameron standing crestfallen as the French President steps off to the side.  This is the Daily Mail report (my redlining and bolding):

Mr Sarkozy laid the blame for the failure squarely at Mr Cameron's feet. Speaking shortly before dawn, after what he called a 'difficult' night, he said: 'David Cameron made a proposal that seemed to us unacceptable, a protocol to the treaty that would have exonerated the United Kingdom from a great number of financial service regulations.'

Mr Cameron defended his stance. 'What was on offer is not in Britain's interest so I didn't agree to it,' he told reporters in Brussels.

Sarkoy swerves ...

What did the 26 decide in Brussels?

Here's a short summary of the major decisions, from BBC News, and here is the completed document they signed in the early morning:

EU leaders aim to have the pact - known as a "fiscal compact" - ready to take effect by March.

Its main provisions include:

• a cap of 0.5% of GDP on countries' annual structural deficits
• "automatic consequences" for countries whose public deficit exceeds 3% of GDP
• the tighter rules to be enshrined in countries' constitutions
• the EU's permanent bailout facility, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), to be accelerated and brought into force in July 2012
• the adequacy of 500bn-euro (£427bn; $666bn) limit for the ESM to be reassessed

• eurozone and other EU countries to provide up to 200bn euros to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help debt-stricken eurozone members.

No More Haircuts:

Sarkozy managed to back Merkel off of her crusade to punish those who had made bad decisions by investing in the bonds of governments that were now unable to repay the full amounts they owed.

A crestfallen Cameron ...

She had insisted that the private sector banks that had bought Greek government bonds take a loss – known in the trade as a haircut – before Germany would lend money to save Greece. She was offered a 20% haircut but stood her ground, and finally agreed to a 50% haircut. Her principle was that sinners should be punished.

Now she has agreed in the Brussels deal that there will not be a requirement for banks to take haircuts in future rescue operations of Eurozone countries:

We clearly reaffirm that the decisions taken on 21 July and 26/27 October concerning Greek debt are unique and exceptional; standardised and identical Collective Action Clauses will be included, in such a way as to preserve market liquidity, in the terms and conditions of all new euro government bonds.

The Next Steps:

A key element for Chancellor Merkel over the past 2 years has been the order in which steps are taken to solve the government debt crisis.

She has insisted on a step by step process, first dealing with the fiscal problems through agreement between the Eurozone governments, before considering any rescue operations of faltering governments by the European Central Bank (ECB), the IMF, or some new fangled joint guarantee of Eurozone debt by all the governments (read: piggybacking on Germany's wealth to save the spendthrift sisters) through the issue of a joing eurobond. She insisted on having something tangible on the table.

For Merkel, it was essential that the horse be put before the cart, and in her mind she clearly knew what was the horse and what was the cart. Fix the system first then fix the individual countries. 

This was something that the Obama administration failed to do – he jumped in to rescue the banks with his TARP (Toxic Assets Repurchase Program) but then failed to fix the systemic problems (no Volcker solution, no reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act to remove temptation by separating investment banking from commercial banking, no removal of rewards for greed by controlling obscene bank officers bonuses, not right regulation of derivatives, no tax on financial transactions to damp down predatory currency speculation ...the list goes on and on).

Now Merkel is prepared to consider beefing up the new Financial Stability Mechanism (FSM), by considering whether an increase is needed in mid-2012:

We will reassess the adequacy of the overall ceiling of the EFSF/ESM of EUR 500 billion (USD 670 billion) in March 2012.

Cameron's team had repeatedly parrotted the witless American suggestion that the EU use a massive amount of committed funds to reassure the skittish markets that all European banks would have access to funds – a solution termed the bazooka.

Now Merkel is prepared to consider her variant of the bazooka – but it will be a Eurozooka, designed in Berlin, with tight controls, and accompanied by a raft of new regulations to remove gambling from the banking systems of Europe.

Methinks her approach will succeed.

The Lean Years:

What is clear is that the EU faces five to ten lean years, with slow growth, a recession, massive unemployment in the 10% plus range for the weakers sisters, major painful structural changes as the weaker sisters are forced by the Brussels deal of September 9 to move their economies away from state controlled activities similar to those used in China, to a more efficient mixed economy.

However, notwithstanding all the doomsday sayers, what happened in Brussels was the essential first step. Other steps will come, and Europe will be far better off for future shocks than America is.

And a lot of the credit will go to the unlikely partnership of Sarkozy and Merkel.

Comes the time, comes the man.

Europe is lucky to have such people at the helm right now. American is unfortunate that it does not.

A Picture of the Future:

Try your hand at picking the likely outcome of the Eurocrisis, using the BBC interactive diagram you can find here. 

I believe the correct option is the Union option, which is this:

Union - The European Union turns into a political federation

As the financial malaise keeps doggedly returning, so the eurozone governments call more and more summits and come up with more and more proposals for closer union.

Eventually they agree a complete political union - a democratically-elected government in Brussels that can borrow with the backing of all 17 member countries, and can spend money wherever needed - rescuing banks, paying unemployment benefits, financing investment in the more recession-mired countries. The UK and other EU countries not signed up to joining the euro are asked to exit the EU altogether and join a looser free trade area, with much less political influence.

Now you try it!

The Cat's London Solution:

Cameron should table a revised financial transactions tax, which will avoid his fear of leakage from London to other centres. This Cameron-Tobin Tax would tax financial transactions entered into by any member of a bank's family, no matter where the transaction takes place. It will have extra-territorial effect as a result. So if any bank now trading in London tries to avoid the tax by moving its trading book to, say, New York, and have the trading done by a subsidiary in New York (where there is no such tax), then the EU will nevertheless impose the tax on all relatives of that trading company which are doing business in the EU, and so recover the tax.

In essence, the trading sins of a family member will be paid for by the family; a form of collective taxation that Americans are familiar with under their tax system.

This will discourage a flight from London and the EU, especially of a lower Cameron-Tobin Tax rate is levied on bank families which do their trading in the U.

UK's Cameron needs to take a lesson from The Gambler

Lissen up, David: Click here!

And listen especially hard when Kenny Rogers has this to say:

And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run...

Ev'ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away and knowing what to keep.

Because you lost big in the wee hours of last night.

Perhaps you missed their eyes ...?

He said, "Son, I've made a life out of readin' people's faces,
And knowin' what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.

 Cameron threatened to use his veto to block a deal that all 26 of the 27 EU members had agreed upon, by asking for special treatment for London's financial centre:

German sources said they were surprised by the British veto, although in the run-up to the summit they had received "different signals" from the British. Merkel recalled it was 20 years to the day since the EU struck the accord on monetary union in the Dutch city of Maastricht and that even back then the British had secured their opt-out from the euro. "We always respected that and through all these years Great Britain has played a positive role."

Merkel pointed out that despite the British blocking, the UK had as much an interest as anyone in a successful single currency. "Like all the rest of us, Great Britain depends on a stable euro. We're all in the same boat."

In the wee hours of the morning the UK Prime Minister played his ace, and lost:

When it became clear that Britain was going to wield its veto to block a revision of the EU treaty, there was a break at 3am for coffee and fruit salad as the treaty negotiations moved into the second phase. This was a discussion on how a treaty would be agreed by the 17 eurozone members plus any other states that wanted to sign up.

Cameron intervened to say that the institutions of the EU, such as the European commission and the European court of justice, could not be used to enforce the fiscal compact. This was challenged by Merkel, Sarkozy and Barroso.

According to senior French sources, Cameron told Merkel: "The ECJ does not belong to you." The German chancellor responded: "But we can use it anyway."...

She brushed aside British objections to using EU institutions as instruments in the new eurozone regime, saying Berlin had taken legal advice and that there would be no problem. But she noted that "Great Britain will watch that closely."

But not all was lost, it seems:

Cameron insisted that his relations with Sarkozy and Merkel had not been harmed. "David shared a lift with Angela after the summit broke up," one source said.

A pity, but understandable: London's prosperity depends on the lock it has on the international financial world, and Cameron felt he had to defend this at all costs.

But he overplayed his hand, and lost. Now Britain will pay the price over the coming decades.

Harper Tories arrogantly skating on thin ice

On June 30, 2013, we will look back over the past 18 months are realize that the month of November in the year 2011 showed the high tide of one political party, the ebbing of the tide of another, and the coming high tide of another.

The Tory Achilles Heel:

We will be able to confirm Bob Rae's views of the Achilles heel of Stephen Harper's new Tories, as reported in the Ottawa Citizen:

The lack of civility and democratic debate in Parliament has become a major problem — and ultimately it will come back and bite the Conservative government, says Liberal interim leader Bob Rae. "I think it's going to turn out to be a very, very deep Achilles heel on the part of this government," Rae said in an exclusive interview with Postmedia News on Tuesday. "I think it's going to be a quality of this government which ultimately will be to its demise."

The Ebbing of the Orange Tide:

The Orange Tide in the province of Quebec is now starting to ebb, as Chantal Hebert has sketched so eloquently:

By focusing on leaping to government rather than on consolidating its second-place position, the party may have gotten dangerously ahead of itself. In hindsight, the party’s strategists made two extraordinarily short-sighted calls on the way to select a successor to Jack Layton.

The first was to maintain Nycole Turmel as interim leader once a summer gig turned into a long-term assignment...

The second error was to decline to take the time to rethink the rules by which the next leader will be chosen so that every province including Quebec has a voice proportionate to its weight in the federation.

Last summer, some NDP strategists were apparently more concerned with putting spokes in Thomas Mulcair’s leadership wheels than with keeping the party on track in Quebec.

With a formula that ensures that the leadership cannot be won or lost in Quebec, the campaign is now largely taking place in the regions of the country where the party has a well-established base.

As a result, the NDP has slipped from the radar of the province that propelled it to second place last May.

A lack of strategic thinkers had doomed many a political party, so the NDP is simply following a well-worn path of political losers with its myopic approach to the Quebec beachhead what Jack Layton won on May 2, 2011.

The Coming High Tide of the Liberal Party of Canada:

May 2, 2011 will be seen as the low tide of Liberal fortunes. 

Since then, we have seen a stunning change in the way the LPC is going about its business.

Not only is the Roadmap to Renewal (along with the remarkable background paper prepared by President Alfred Apps) indeed a roadmap to redemption, it also sets sights on remedying a major democratic deficit which has lead to 4 in 10 Canadian voters not voting (the 7.5 million Canadians who sat on their hands on May 2).

NDP Leadership Debate confirms there are 4 realistic contenders

Out of nine.

However, we can be proud that a Canadian party could field nine candidates of this calibre, any one of whom would knock spots of the whole Republican slate for presidency (except The Newt).

I watched these contenders, listened to their speeches and answers, watched the interplay between them, and thought how anyone who had no knowledge of these men and women would find them.

There were few fireworks and little genuine debate:

The bilingual debate — with the first hour in English and the second in French — on the economy seemed more like a series of short stump speeches than a genuine contest as candidates chose to trumpet their experience and sometimes indistinguishable ideas rather than go after each other.