I am running for President of the Ontario Liberal Party – here is why
Every major provincial party is failing Ontarians
For two straight elections in 2022 and 2025, the majority of Ontarians registered with Elections Ontario have not been inspired to vote. Clearly all four major parties have been failing to fundamentally represent the interests of most Ontarians, including the one of which I am a 6-year member, the Ontario Liberal Party. (I have documented from personal experience elsewhere the failures of the internal governance of the Green Party of Ontario.)
What is particularly remarkable about the mindset of the OLP is what could be described as a lack of (adequate) introspection and internal soul-searching in the face of its recent losses. Unlike the Liberal Party of Canada, the OLP is not in any sense the “natural governing party” of its respective domain. The actual natural governing party of Ontario is the Progressive Conservative Party, and historically it takes a perfect storm to bring the OLP into power. Yet the OLP operates itself not as if it wants to bring on the rain, but as if it is just complacently waiting for the paint to dry. Leading authorities and other members have excused recent losses as poor circumstances of misfortune; for example, blaming this year’s loss on the circumstances of the early election call. But rationalizations are not plans for improvement.
I do not consider any one person as solely to blame for the party’s defeats, whether the Leader, the incumbent President, or others. Every person of authority within the OLP has been operating with the mainstream support and like thinking of many others. And this party does not operate as a personality cult unlike some others I have previously been involved with. But the failure of the OLP to win elections is easy to explain when taking seriously its governance shortfalls.
Internal governance is the problem
As a political party that has gone a generation now without a single membership or delegated vote on policy resolutions, the OLP has been undemocratic by the standards of many Canadian provincial and federal political parties. If you were to compare the OLP to the increasingly-fringe People’s Party of Canada for example, we would see that the governance differences would include the OLP possessing a Constitution and having elections for Council and Leader. But we would also see that both parties never hold membership votes on policies, and that the vast majority of members never get a vote on anything other than leadership votes (and even there turnout is a problem). When one takes seriously the lack of power for most OLP members, it is practically a miracle that the party gets anywhere close to 30% of the popular vote – and not the least surprising when it loses.
I suspect that over the long term, the OLP’s governing Executive Council as an institution has suffered from excessive turnover. The current Council is seemingly empty of persons (beyond Bob Wright) who experienced and witnessed the growth of the OLP from the opposition benches at the turn of the century, and entirely empty of persons involved in the federal Liberals’ return to power in 2015. Admittedly electing myself would not change that, as neither is true of myself either. And obviously, the incumbent President has put truly immense work hours and effort into the position.
Still, fresh ideas need to be introduced somewhere, and I doubt that observers of the current President’s work would testify that she has new ideas for governance that have not been allowed by others around her to be implemented yet. I also do bring forth experience as someone who has tried to help smaller parties grow, and failed to bring about such growth not due to excess personal influence but due to my influence being rejected. (Try to imagine an alternate universe where the Green Party of Ontario did not expel me in the middle of an official Deputy Leader candidacy in 2018 that I was plausibly going to win, and imagine then if that party would have continued to stagnate electorally. There’s at least some possibility that things would have turned out differently for that party.)
The platform for my presidential campaign
So, what are the fresh ideas that I would bring forward to the OLP? They are as follows:
Pushing for a policy resolution process that is widely accessible to members in good standing with non-controversial ideas, opening to submissions no later than 2026.
Loosening the restrictions upon Councillors' communication via email and other digital formats with respect to discussing governance matters with OLP members.(*Updated September 10: This pledge was based on a factual misunderstanding.)Opening Executive Council meetings to observance by general members and increasing accessibility of meeting minutes. (If the smaller Green Party of Canada can do this, so can the OLP.)
Creating an official members-only discussion forum where mainstream members can debate and collaborate on the direction of the party.
Reducing class and time limitation barriers to participation in nomination contests, leadership contests, and other party functions by relying less on fundraising thresholds in favour of screening candidacies via petitions of member support versus member opposition, such that those with more opposing than supporting member signatures are screened out. And use the same for/against petition process to screen policy resolutions for a 2026 conference.
Publishing member-approved policies within a public Policy Book.
Eliminating the Leader’s salary in favour of encouraging the Leader to delegate work and to only volunteer for the party on a part-time basis. (*This was added to the platform 24 hours after publishing and may have been missed by some commentators below.)
While policy resolutions are not the only crucial tool of policy formulation within a successful political party, they are a key unavoidable cornerstone. Resolutions processes are how a party does a trial run on how a debate would play out in the wider public, which cannot be replicated by opinion polls which only give snapshots of opinion in one time and place. Resolutions processes are also a core means of drawing policy solutions that have been overlooked by the media and which have missed the attention of existing leadership.
Both the incumbent President and myself would respect the will of the delegates of the Constitutionally-mandated leadership review: if most delegates vote for a leadership contest in this AGM, then there will be a leadership contest. However, I would support a process where the incumbent Leader would be permitted to run in the ensuing contest. And, it would be my long-term objective to change the OLP Constitution to make leadership contests automatically reoccur at least every other AGM. (Under the existing OLP Constitution, Council has special authority to submit constitutional amendments, which increases the stakes in the election of who gets to lead that body.) Leadership contests should be a mundane and constant fact of life, not once-in-a-generation opportunities where everything is at stake.
The final pitch
I hope that this campaign comes across as positive and constructive in tone. I have criticisms to make of the manner in which the OLP conducts its elections, but I am confident that if I lose, it will not be the result of personal discrimination and more a result of the class of persons that OLP AGM elections screen for (i.e. highly-connected, super-accessible in-person at OLP events, willing to invest money on campaign materials). Interestingly, declaring oneself for OLP President is a surprisingly simple process, whereas I previously needed 10 members from across the province to nominate myself for the GPO Deputy Leader candidacy. I give my gratitude to those who take my candidacy seriously where others might not bother with the least attention or interest.
The stakes are high in setting the tone for the rebuild of the party leading up to 2029. Council needs to borrow on long-lasting experience, but the decisions it has consistently made desperately need to change.
"Yet the OLP operates itself not as if it wants to bring on the rain, but as if it is just complacently waiting for the paint to dry." Let's take these new steps for the OLP.
Every major political party in Canada is failing citizens.
I don't think minor reforms you suggested would help, and the hierarchical corporate party system is a huge part of the problem.
https://www.davidgraham.ca/p/leadership-by-caucus
Here is an example that I wish more people were reading: Questioning whether the US-style Presidential process is appropriate for party leaders at all. The problem is not that the corporate fan clubs and fan club members don't have enough control over caucus members! Fan club members should not be dictating policy to elected caucus members, as that eradicates the entire purpose of having a parliament in the first place.
And "Fair Vote Canada" and its tunnel vision focus on the interests of those corporate fan clubs is a huge part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I don't vote along party lines, and the more contol the party fan clubs have over caucus members, the less likely I am going to consider that party's nominated candidates.