Problem: Nominating committee failed to produce nominees in time; ED [executive director] insists floor nominations are unconstitutional, demands secret ballot at convention.
Historically the party has used nominations from the AGM floor for the executive. There is no constitutional bar against this.
The constitution does require the nomination committee report be provided to the members 60 days in advance. Nominees were actually kept secret until about mid May, most members were never notified at all.
Recommendation: open nominations from the floor followed by visible voting - no secretive voting or vote counting processes.
Problem: convention schedule limits policy discussion; ED to pick 30-40 proposals for discussion, veto the rest.
71 valid policy proposals were submitted to the VP policy more than 90 days in advance of the AGM. A further 17, some from caucus, may also have met the constitutional deadlines.
The constitution requires that all such motions be provided to each member. This was not done.
The constitution requires that all properly formed and supported motions be voted on at the AGM. This is not being done.
Instead we have a process under which the executive director asked the CAs to pick those they liked and said he would use those reports to pick the 30 or so that will be raised at the AGM - effectively vetoing all the rest.
There is no constitutional support for this process; it asks the wrong question ("love it" or "hate it" vs "discuss it" or "don't discuss it") of the wrong people and is neither open nor auditable.
Recommendation: print all resolutions in the AGM booklet, use an electronic survey of AGM attendees to determine the order in which the resolutions are raised. Go from most interest to least, stop when we run out of time.
(Tech for this exists, is proven, is free - reports are public, automatic, on-line, and can be read to determine final ordering right up to the warm-up speech at the AGM. )
Problem: a motion to replace the existing constitution with a new one. The text of the new one has at least as many errors, ambiguities, contradictions, and ommissions as the current one - but overall casts in stone a number of changes whose net effect is to take control of the party from the members and place it in the hands of the executive committee and its hirees instead.
The constitution requires that motions like this be provided to all members at least 60 days before the AGM. This was not done - it was only made available as a web document about 35 days before the AGM and only some email-enabled members were told of its existence.
Recommendation: withdraw this motion as out of order; table the draft for information only. Strike a task force (modelled on pay & perks) with open, public, discussion of issues and run by someone (e.g. Link Byfield) with an interest in constitutional issues and a long track record of honest dealing. ( I have volunteered to make the tech for that work throughout the process.)
4.1 The executive director's claim that "The Party Constitution does not allow for nominations from the floor" (in the AGM letter) is literally true because the issue is not discussed in the document - however the obvious conclusion: that they are disallowed, is false.
4.2 The VM1 "disclaimer" in the constitution motion - and multiple emails pushing it - suggests that this is just a draft to be cleaned up over the next year.
It is not - this is a motion to replace what we have and would take full effect immediately after this AGM if passed.
Note that many of the VM notes in the constitutional motion suffer from this problem - with major change described as "minor edits" and a complete change-over in a voting procedure described as a clarification.
Similarly the only statement I've seen announcing availability for the constitutional update arrived at 11:10AM on May 21st and consisted of:
There was a problem with the link to the Constitutional amendment resolutions. Go to www.wildrosealliance.ca/2010agm/constitution to see the resolutions. Our apologies.
Which at least gives the impression that the document had been available for some time - but the document is internally dated 4:38 PM on May 20th.
Recommendation: the party should adopt, and the executive immediately promulgate, a policy requiring honesty in communication. "Slick usage" is appalling in snake oil ads and utterly inappropriate for a group seeking to earn the public trust.
5.1 the federal PC model does not apply to an Alberta party - media coverage of people airing and resolving differences on policy or executive commitee choices is good for us, not bad.
Thus current plans to prevent member nominations while surpressing member policy proposals at the 2010AGM are just fundamentally not appropriate in this party.
5.2 Feudal vs Republican. The typical party structure in which the CAs are creatures of the party and power flows from the few at the top to the majority at the bottom can be characterised as feudal. In contrast the WildroseAlliance is republican in nature: members delegate their powers to member controlled bodies including CAs and the executive.
Thus actions based on the feudal paradigm are just fundamentally not appropriate in this party.