The national board of the Liberal Party has put forward some ideas in the Roadmap for Renewal. There are two versions of the document: one endorsed by the national board of directors (8 pages, PDF) and the longer one (79 pages, PDF), which are essentially the views of Alf Apps, president of the party.

While I agree with quite a few of the ideas proposed in the paper (comments are below), and they are certainly worth debating, I think the paper misses a few important points that are crucial to our future success as a political party. We can make all the internal improvements we want, but if we don't get the high level stuff right, we're sunk.

1. The Liberal Party should be a party of choice for reasonable people.
   1. Treatment of opponents: the corollary of this is that all forms of exaggeration and hyperbole, both positive and negative, should be avoided. The Leader and caucus, who are the public face of the party as represented by the news media, should not engage in doomsaying about our opponents. Every time we attack the Conservatives or NDP with exaggerated claims that make them look as bad as possible, we alienate the reasonable people who have voted Conservative or NDP. This has obvious implications for Question Period and how caucus behaves in the House of Commons. It's as simple as following the golden rule: treat our opponents as we would like them to treat us. Failing to follow this simple rule has led our politics into the sad state it is in now.
   2. Policy development: reasonable people need to be convinced of the merits of policies before they will support them. So we need to be engaged in continuous policy development, seeking good ideas and expertise wherever we can find them. This means that we need to respect and believe that Canadians are experts on their own lives and can help us identify problems that lend themselves to a public solution. It also means that our policies should be based on evidence and refined through consultation to be as good as possible. As a result, we should not have any "surprise" policies or hold back our policy ideas. Our good policy ideas should survive elections, whether we form the government or not.
   3. Fiscal policy: we need to be honest with Canadians about both revenue and expenditure. Federal taxes as a percentage of GDP have never been lower, but we have said nothing about the huge cut to the GST and its relationship to the deficits we are running at the federal level. We must have the courage to talk about tax increases when they are necessary just as we must have the courage to review programs and cut expenditures when they are necessary.
2. The Liberal Party should be a party for liberty and opportunity.
   1. Reform of existing policy: I don't mean that we need to start dismantling the welfare state as it exists in Canada, but we do need to re-assess a lot of the regulations, laws and institutions that exist (and in many cases were implemented by the Liberal Party) -- are they really necessary? This will mean re-examining and reforming a lot of sacred cows: the Wheat Board, supply management, private delivery of health care, the criminal code & sentencing, federal-provincial jurisdiction and powers, the Senate, immigration, the military, EI, copyright and intellectual property law, review of foreign investment, etc.
   2. Poverty: we should seek to reduce poverty (i.e. the lack of opportunity) as much as possible.
   3. Inter-generational equity: we should keep in mind the impact that our decisions today will have on the liberty of future generations. This has obvious implications for environmental policy, natural resource policy, the federal debt, education and many other areas.
   4. Taxes & spending: prioritizing liberty doesn't mean that we hate taxation, but it does require that we spend tax dollars effectively and continuously review and improve programs.
   5. Openness: we should push for government to be more open, with the default being that government information is open, not secret.
3. The Liberal Party should be a party of integrity.
   1. Our leader and candidates should be people of great personal integrity.
   2. In the short term, our policy should be consistent, whether we are in opposition or in government. Over the longer term, our policy will likely change as we learn and discover news ways of addressing public problems. We will only succeed in electoral politics if we can gain the trust of reasonable people. Consistency in policy coupled with open-mindedness over the longer term is key to our credibility.
4. The Liberal Party should stop evaluating elections solely in terms of forming the government or not forming the government.
   1. Hopefully, one positive result of our falling popular vote has been a shift in thinking within the party that "winning the election" only means "forming the government." Obviously, it is easiest to advance our policy agenda if we elect enough MPs to form the government. And surely, we want to elect as many MPs as possible, but we should have other goals as well: what policies did we advance in campaign? How did perceptions of those policies change during the campaign? How good are the candidates we run in each riding? How qualified and effective are the members of our caucus to advance our policy agenda? The members of cabinet or critics? How much support do we have throughout the country? The collapse of the PC Party and the rise of Reform and the Bloc masked our failures in some of these areas for many years.
   2. We should not necessarily demand or expect that our Leader resign if we do not form the government. It takes time for Canadians to get to know and support the leader of a political party. Handling defeat well is something Canadians will respect.
   3. Post-election coalitions or cooperation is a legitimate means of forming a government. But we must be clear with voters in advance if we are willing to enter into such arrangements with other parties. No surprises after the fact. And we must believe that forming the government in a coalition is a better way of advancing our policy agenda than being an effective opposition party.

Proposals from the Roadmap for Renewal

1. Major themes and priorities: obviously, I think these are less important than the four main points that I've made above. The first point about EDAs is probably not accurate: I know from experience that our EDA in London West is doing really well, but we still only came second. The NDP EDA in the riding is not very active, and they did quite well in the election. I believe it had nothing to do with their EDA.
2. Funding the party: reasonable ideas to raise more money, but nothing revolutionary. I like the idea of axing the Revenue Committee -- what does it do, anyway?
3. New category of "Supporter". This is basically a shift to free party membership.
   • Cons: it is very likely to increase the costs associated with Leader and nomination contests, as it costs more money to connect with more potential voters. Given existing rules for political fundraising, and expected future revenues of the party, this could be very problematic. For example, Obama raised $23 million for the primaries and caucuses in the USA and Hilary Clinton raised $20 million. Translated to Canadian scale, that would be $2.3 million and $2 million. Also, I'm not sure how this higher threshold for costs would affect the quality and quantity of candidates.
   • It contributes to the perception that the Prime Minister is directly elected by the people instead of serving in the role as first among equals because he or she is leader of the party. I'm not sure I like adopting more aspects of republicanism.
   • It is likely to increase the influence of the Leader relative to the influence of the other elected MPs, possibly leading to less incentive for people to run for election as an MP, less effective MPs and worse decision-making.
   • I'm not so worried about the possibility of a "takeover" by fake supporters, especially if it were done by preferential ballot.
   • Pros: it would encourage identification of supporters outside of election campaigns.
   • It may also further democratize the selection of our Leader and candidates. In conjunction with more open local nominations, this could encourage people who don't have a long history of political involvement to run.

Right now, I'm in favour of trying the weighted one-member, one-vote approach, which we've never used, before switching to this system for selection our leader.

4. Online and electronic voting: this is a terrible idea. The consequences of a compromised election are very bad and widespread (it affects everyone, not just the people whose votes are compromised), it is very hard to maintain a secure system, and scrutineering/auditing the results is very difficult. This is an idea that people support because very few of them understand the serious risks associated with it.
5. Mail-in voting: this is a good idea. Much easier to audit and much harder to compromise. Did you know that Oregon has very high voter turnout and they love mail-in voting? It's true.
6. Open nominations: great idea.
7. Streamlining of operations (i.e. getting rid of the PTAs, sort of): I don't see a need for any provincial or territorial associations. If anything, I think we should organize the national party by function (policy development, contesting elections) and have geographic representation for cities and other regions (i.e. regional rather than by province/territory) on the national board. For example:
   • if we really want regional representation, instead of the president of each PTA, let's have one representative each for the GTA, Metro Montreal, and Metro Vancouver (the three really big cities) and one each for BC (non-Metro Vancouver), AB, Saskitoba (SK, MB), Ontario (non-GTA), Quebec (non-Montreal), the Atlantic provinces (NS, NB, PEI, NL) and the North (NWT, NU, YK). That's ten representatives instead of 12 and more representative of the population and urban/rural realities.
8. I'd get rid of all of the commissions -- I don't see the value in dividing people up by gender, age or ancestry and it adds unnecessary complexity.
9. Director of Digital Operations reporting to the board -- seems strange to have the person report directly to the board instead of to the national director (i.e. CEO of the party). Regardless, not a big deal.
10. Putting more resources into Liberalist: great idea.
11. Strategic plan and annual report: yes! Both very good ideas and long overdue.
12. Council of Presidents: not really sure what this body does or why we need it. With 308 members, it's unwieldy.
13. "Preparing for Victory": see not exaggerating and what winning the election means, above. Deadlines for election readiness stuff: seems reasonable.

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