DUDE, WHERE ARE MY DELEGATES?

Policy Workshops Get Lost In Frantic Jockeying Of Leadership Contest

MONTREAL - The perils of holding a leadership contest and a policy
convention at the same time were quickly apparent yesterday as
Liberals gathered to name a successor to Paul Martin.

Leadership candidates and their throngs of flag-waving supporters
marched up and down the Palais des congres like so many banana
republics at the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

Meanwhile, the workshops where Liberals were meant to hammer out 135
or so policy resolutions were all but deserted. The 18 resolutions
before the international affairs workshop were summarily dealt with in
30 minutes, with minimal debate. Along the corridor in the social
justice workshop, delegates voted to lower the age of consent for anal
sex and legalize marijuana. The support of 10 delegates is needed
before a resolution is even debated.

The Liberal party apparently couldn't find even 10 warm bodies
bothered enough to discuss the age of consent, so it sailed straight
to a vote and passed.

At least the marijuana question received cursory discussion. One lady
from Calgary argued that marijuana could cause schizophrenia, which
left some of the potheads seriously bummed out. In any event, neither
resolution was prioritized, so will not make it to the plenary session
for discussion today. The plenary promises to be no more dramatic than
the workshops, as only the resolutions that faced no opposition had
the numbers necessary to be prioritized.

When it came time to decide which three resolutions should be sent on
for discussion by the whole convention today, there was enough
opposition among the 40 or so people in the room to prevent the age of
consent issue from being among them.

In the event, the social justice workshop voted to bring forward a
resolution calling for more affordable housing, one advocating a ban
on semi-automatic weapons and another declaring that child poverty is,
on balance, a Very Bad Thing.

I didn't have time to check, but I bet the call to save B.C.'s
endangered spirit bear won plenty of backing. After all, which
heartless bastard could argue against a resolution that points out
this "remarkable part of British Columbia's natural heritage is as
unique to Canada as the panda bear is to China"?

Not that it would have mattered if more controversial resolutions had
emerged from the workshops. This is a leadership convention, with a
policy debate bolted on. In three days the party will have a new
leader who will use much of the material that passes through the
Choices that Count policy workshops document as kindling.

In the immortal words of Abba, the winner takes it all, and if you
believe all that guff about democracy being a fundamental principle of
governance, you'd be well advised to join a kibbutz.