Pubdate: Sun, 15 Jan 2012
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Authors: Susan Delacourt, Bruce Campion-Smith and Les Whittington

LIBERALS END 2012 CONVENTION WITH INTERNAL CHANGES, NEW PRESIDENT,
RESOLUTION TO LEGALIZE POT

OTTAWA-Liberals are pinning their 2015 revival hopes on a new 
president, a whole new approach to building political support - and 
maybe even a puff or two of marijuana. 

Backers came out of a weekend convention here shaking off reports of 
the party's demise and insisting the internal changes they made will 
make the Liberals ready to take on Conservatives and New Democrats in 
the next election.

Liberal interim leader Bob Rae said the structural overhaul of the 
Liberal party - the creation of a new cadre of "supporters" - was the 
big achievement of the weekend.

"The most important issues for the party, with respect to policy, is 
this question of the structure of the party. That's the most 
significant issue . . . . We've opened up the party, that we've 
actually transformed the party - there's no comparison with either the 
NDP or the Conservatives," Rae said.

And in a symbolic move, delegates elected Mike Crawley, a 42-year-old 
businessman who had headed the Ontario Liberals, as party president 
over Sheila Copps, a former cabinet minister seen by some as the 
party's old guard.

"Look at this weekend . . . the energy, the ideas, the debate and the 
passion," Crawley told cheering delegates in his acceptance speech. 
"The convention signals a party that is clearly focused on the future." 

But all those moves were partly overshadowed by the adoption of a 
resolution on Sunday to legalize and regulate marijuana - and Rae's 
apparent embrace of the move. 

The federal Conservatives wasted no time denouncing the move as proof 
of the Liberals' "soft-on-crime" stance.

But Rae said the Liberals are offering a new approach to marijuana to 
avoid "sending another generation of young people into prison." 
Alcohol and cigarettes are the most addictive substances in Canada 
now, Rae noted. "Let's face up to it, Canada - the war on drugs has 
been a complete bust," he declared to a standing ovation.

Samuel Lavoie, president of the Young Liberals of Canada, held up the 
motion on marijuana as proof of the generational change taking place 
in the party.

"Young people want to take a bigger role, want to be stakeholders in 
the future of the party and that we're willing to push the envelope," 
Lavoie told reporters.

Lavoie said he's not sure the resolution will actually make it into 
the party's election platform but said support for the move is "overwhelming."

The three-day convention was largely about rejigging the party's 
internal workings to put it on more competitive footing with the 
Conservatives and New Democrats, who have each made gains in recent 
elections at the Liberals' expense.

Bruised by the May 2 election that reduced the venerable party to 
third place in the Commons, delegates came into the convention with an 
appetite to shake things up and show detractors there's life in the 
federal Liberals.

Delegates agreed to create the new class of "supporter" and give them 
an unprecedented say in the selection of the leader.

However, delegates drew the line on some reforms, for example denying 
"supporters" a say in the choice of local candidates and rejecting a 
proposal for U.S.-style primaries in the selection of the leader.

One veteran Liberal, a lawyer, summed up the convention with a bit of 
legalese: "In terms of where we want to be in 2015, this was a 
necessary but insufficient step."

He said the attendance - more than 3,000 delegates in all - and upbeat 
mood will help with fundraising in the year ahead.

On that front, Liberals, playing catch-up with the well-oiled Tory 
fundraising machine, set up a new, chief fundraising post within the 
party. Alex Graham, an investment banker and managing director with 
Morgan Stanley, who served in the 1980s as an aide to Liberal leader 
John Turner, was announced for the fundraising post over the weekend. 

Rae closed the convention with an energetic speech brimming with 
confidence - traits in short supply since the May election - that set 
out priorities for the Liberals.

"We Liberals have clearly and emphatically said to the people of 
Canada: 'We embrace change and we embrace all Canadians as we rebuild 
this great national party," he declared.

He said the party must tackle the income gap that has seen a small 
percentage of the population grow more and more wealthy while incomes 
in the rest of society have stagnated.

"We have to recognize that this polarization of income and opportunity 
is another great challenge of our time," Rae said. He said Liberals 
have always tried to foster economic growth and prosperity but must 
guarantee "that the prosperity we create is a prosperity that is 
deeply and widely shared across this country."

Reminding the convention that Liberals fought to guarantee Canadians' 
individual rights by bringing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and 
championed same-sex marriage, Rae said the party must continue working 
to ensure "fairness and social justice."

And he said Canada must reach out to the rest of the world to deal 
with climate change, poverty, war and human rights.

While the convention itself generated lots of headlines and buzz for 
the Liberals, the party as a whole seems content to take a lower 
profile now that the big gathering is over. 

Crawley made a point of assuring partisans that if he got the job, 
he'd stay deliberately out of the spotlight, and he repeated those 
reassurances on Sunday after his victory. 

"Don't get too used to seeing me around," Crawley said.

"There's a lot of work to be done over the next two years with the 
party. . . . So my interest is not to be a face on TV.

"My role is to create a new party which is open to new ideas, which 
engages its members and which has more cohesion."

With the convention over, attention will now turn to the question of 
leadership, which will be settled at the next Liberal gathering in early 2013.

Rae took on the interim job last June under a set of conditions 
imposed by past president Alf Apps and the party executive - which 
included a promise that he wouldn't run for the permanent leader's spot. 

Crawley says that he, too, believes that the same rules should apply. 
"An interim leader, if they decided they were going to seek the 
permanent leadership of the party, would naturally . . . have to step 
down from that role if they ever reached that decision," Crawley said. 

What this means is that speculation will continue to surround whether 
Rae is interested in making his interim job a more permanent one, and 
if so, when he'd step down. For now, he repeatedly says he has made no 
plans about the longer-term future and that he's enjoying the interim 
leader's post.
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.