From February 20-23, federal Liberals will gather in Montreal, and one of their tasks will be to elect a new national executive. Last week, I published interviews with some of the table officer candidates. This week, I finish with the candidates for party president.
Two contested elections will be held for national board
positions at the Montreal biennial – national membership secretary, and party
president. The two candidates seeking the office of president – Brian Rice from
Vancouver and Anna Gainey from Montreal, both offer impressive ideas and
distinct visions of how they see the role, and what they’d like to do in the
position.
I recently spoke with Brian Rice about his campaign, the
challenges facing the party and the role he sees the president playing in meeting
those challenges. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation. My
interview with Anna Gainey will be published Tuesday.
What’s your
background in the Liberal Party of Canada?
I joined the Liberal Party of Canada in January of 2009.
That was the first time I managed to find someone who would accept my $10; I’d
tried to join several times before that but back in the day it was a little
harder. I realized that if I wanted to see a Liberal government, and if I
believed in the values of a Liberal government I couldn’t sit on the sidelines
anymore. All Liberals in the country need to get involved.
I called my (Pit Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission) riding
president, and he swore at me for five minutes that he was a Conservative and
had been trying to get the party to replace him, and then he asked me if I
wanted to be the president. My initial reaction was hell no, but I was turned
around when I went to my first biennial in Vancouver in 2009. I met with people
and learned more about what the party was about, and what riding presidents are
supposed to do. Other than the past candidate, who wasn’t really that involved,
I was really the only active member in the riding when I became president.
Over the course of three years I pretty much worked full
time as a volunteer, and worked as hard as I could to start recruiting more
active people, using social media to find like-minded Liberals in the
community, build relationships with them and get to take positions om the
executive. I’m extremely proud of what I did there; it was a dead riding and we
turned it around and gave Liberals a voice.
Shortly after becoming a riding president, I was working in
the New Westminister-Coquitlam by-electio
for Tim Beck Lee. I’d worked on a provincial election, but just doing
data entry. I was full time and I learned a ton; it was a great first federal
experience being able to shadow someone with the experience of (campaign
manager) Greg Wilson.
During that campaign I went to my first BC Federal Council
meeting (composed of federal riding presidents in BC). I was nominated as deputy
chair – what no one told me was the chair would soon be leaving – so I ended up
as chair two weeks later, which put me on the LPC(BC) executive about nine
months after joining the party. I started working in turning the BC
organization around. Then I ran for vice-president of LPC(BC) and got that, and
when David Merner stepped down to run for the leadership, I was president.
Why would you like to
be national president?
There’s a personal side, and a party side.
I’ve discovered that I really like this. I was on the
national board (as LPC(BC) president), and at first I was quite nervous. I’d
heard stories about the way politics was done on the national board. I got
there with some trepidation, but I found I was actually pretty good at the
politics at that level, and I’m good at working with my colleagues to find a
course that addresses everyone’ concerns and brings people together around
common ideas. I really enjoyed my time there. I’m running because I think I
have something to contribute, I’m good at the job, and I enjoy what I’m doing.
Then there’s what I want to accomplish. My focus has always
been on the riding associations. I don’t see a path to victory on a modern
campaign that doesn’t require well-organized, well-trained volunteers on the
ground, making contact with voters in personal ways. That mean we need to have
local organizations managing the recruitment and training of volunteers, making
sure they’re welcomed and valued. In my experience, and from the stories I’ve
been told by riding presidents with longer, the party has never really been
interested in riding associations, been in interested in what they should ne
doing, and never provided them adequate training. We’ve been running the party
from central for so long we’ve forgotten how to empower the volunteers on the
ground to do the work they want to do.
I’ve been travelling a lot, and I haven’t found a riding
without two or three volunteers that want to help make Justin (Trudeau) prime
minister. They’re asking how they can help. They want to know what they can do.
I hope to answer that question as president, and change the way the party and
the board answer that question, so we can be much more of a service
organization and give them the tools they need to be successful.
How’s your French coming
along?
It’s coming along very slowly. I’ve learned that trying to
learn French in the middle of a national campaign; they’re mutually exclusive
activities. I wake up in the morning and have an hour to make calls or learn
French; I’ve been choosing calls. My wife and I are doing an immersive program
with our kids in the spring in French. We’re going to go to Quebec and take an
immersion program for one month. My goal is to, by the end of the summer,
understand enough to be able to hear and understand what I’m being asked, and
hopefully soon respond too, and chair meetings without translation.
How do you define the
role of national president?
Constitutionally it’s pretty clear what the president’s job
is: to chair the national board. As a result of being chair, they’re ex-officio
on every commission and every committee of the national party. I think implicit
in that role, one of the main jobs is to listen to what’s going on in the party
and sit at all those tables not from a micro-management perspective but to hear
what all those organizations are doing, find ways for them to work better
together, and look for areas where they’re duplicating their efforts.
Staff also report to the national board through then president,
and the president is constitutionally responsible for the administration of the
party. We delegate a significant amount of the organization to the national
director, but it’s still the president’s job to make sure the national director
and the staff that report to the national director are doing what the board has
asked of them. The board sets out the broad direction and they work out the
details. I’ve witnessed on my time on the board motions being passed to direct
staff to do something, and the president not making it a priority for staff.
Those are the two constitutional jobs; the other role the
president has is to meet with the caucus and leader, meet with key
stakeholders, and go to caucus when they have concerns about the party.
The second side of it is the fact I’m a full time volunteer
and, while the president’s role is not full time, I have the ability to be full
time. The national board and national director will have to device, when it
comes to activities over and above the role of president, how I can be of
service.
In BC, I walked into the office each day and had a
conversation with the executive director with my president’s hat on, working through
his problems and providing guidance. When that meeting was over I took off my
president’s hat, put on my volunteer’s hat, and asked how I could help. I was
able to fill a lot of gaps in BC by being a volunteer with a good understanding
of what’s going on and being available.
I hope that’s the same experience I’ll have with the
national director. I’ll be able to use my experience going across the country,
meeting Liberals in their ridings and providing training, to help the party
provide those services I’ve discussed. It will be up to the national director
and the board; that’s not my decision.
What’s your first
priority should you get the job?
A strategic plan. The party doesn’t have a strategic plan
right now. I come from a project management background and I still can’t
believe we don’t have a plan. We asked the ridings and the commissions to
generate a plan in the last term and we still don’t have a plan. That, to me,
is inexcusable.
It’s the plan that gives staff direction, but the plan also
defined what the board thinks our success criteria are, and it’s how the members
can hold us to account. If we don’t tell the members what what we’re going to
do, how can the members hold us to account for doing it?
I’m big on accountability. The Council of Presidents is an
organization with some challenge, but I’m hoping we can get it active again and
they can hold us to account.
We need strategic planning. We’ve got two years, there will
be an election in 2015 and we can’t just approach it willy-nilly. We need to
actually create a plan.
(Other party office interviews)
(Other party office interviews)
- LPC national board candidate interview: Maryanne Kampouris for national policy chair
- LPC national board candidate interview: Arif Khan for national membership secretary
- LPC national board candidate interview: Leanne Bourassa for national membership secretary
- LPC national board candidate interview: Chris MacInnes for vice-president, English
- Exit Interview: Liberal Party of Canada national membership secretary Matthew Certosimo
- Exit interview: Liberal Party of Canada president Mike Crawley
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