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.