Conventioneering: Day 1 (substance)

Day one was action packed - it began with topic area committee meetings to discuss proposed resolutions relating to the various themes of the NDP program, continued with speeches from various party luminaries, and ended with the first full plenary session, when the entire convention bickers, debates, and then finally votes on the individual resolutions (like supporting the ship-building industry, or banning supertankers from the inside passage of Haida Gwaii).

I've said it once, and I'll say it again - democracy just doesn't work.

There is no real screening process for delegates - any yahoo (like yours truly) willing to join up and pay the registration fee can come in with full privileges equal to party leaders. As a result, there are many, many yahoos here - from the geriatrics who walk with the timid gait of the ineffectual, to the hipster contingent from Quebec (I counted three funny moustaches and a half-dozen porkpie hats. Presumably the crew rode in on fixed gears all the way from Montreal), to the slightly unhinged, obviously unemployed middle-aged crowd, who everyone humors and no one likes. Since this is a social democratic party, anyone who wants to speak, gets to speak - and boy do they love to speak! Every resolution, even the least controversial one, was an occasion to trot out your pet project or, if you're a newly minted mp, mug for the cameras to get some air time. As a result, in a committee session, in 90 minutes we managed to agree on the order of the resolutions and endorse four of them - a record for the convention, where the average number of committee resolutions voted on was 2.4. To give you some sense of scale, there were 54 resolutions slated for our committee. In full plenary session, we managed to pass 8. Now, these were resolutions everyone favored, and the discussion tended to be about tangentially related issues and complaints that some favorite verbiage was missing from the second bullet point. It's enough to make you nostalgic for the fuhrerprinzip.

I want to tell you the story about one of these debates. It is exception partly because it isn't even about a resolution - one of the lengthiest and most acrimonious disputes of the convention had to do with a procedural point. After the speeches, a pair of chairpersons (chairpeople?) officially convened the convention - I am angry with myself for not getting their names, damn I could have snapped some pictures too - with a vote on the agenda. Someone actually challenged that, but they were cut off by the chairs for being "out of order." So the agenda passed without comment. What followed was the pro forma delivery of reports by party leaders - the president, the treasurer and the national leader. This was mostly symbolic, since there was nothing controversial in their reports, but someone wanted to ask a question anyway. If 2,000 people rolling their eyes as a crotchety old man insists on questioning the selection of auditor, that was what rang out when the man started speaking - no one wanted to humor his suspicions. But then he got cut off by female chair, who explained he was out of order - there was no time for debating the reports in the agenda passed, so they were not subject to debate. This provoked other people - Dan Rishi, federal council member and troublemaker extraordinaire, insisted that all previous conventions included debate, and that she was breaking from past practice. She tried to silence him, arguing that he was out of order, but he stood his ground - he wasn't debating the substance of the report, he was making a point of order, and those were ALWAYS in order. Instead, she tried to rush along the vote on the reports, then ruling any of the point of order protests out of order since voting was underway. The rules lawyers in the crowd were having none of this - one clamboured up to a mike, and insisted that he was outraged and disturbed by this turn. She tried to shut him up, saying the agenda had no room for questions. SO HE CHALLENGED THE CHAIR! (the piano player stops, everyone holds their breath, the tension mounts - you just don't challenge the chair) But, the gauntlet had been thrown down (and the gauntlet throwing was, in point of fact, in order), so the female chair sat down and her partner took over. He had to call a vote on the challenge, and the sea of voting cards told the story - to his surprise, probably to everyone's surprise, the challenge stood, and they had to open up the reports to debate. And what a debate! People asked if fundraising was up in Quebec, and if the leadership had any ideas on how to inspire Canadians, and someone asked why the 2010 financials weren't out yet, and someone told Peggy Nash that she was doing a great job, and we all had a very nice chat while on stage the former chair, flushed red with humiliation, quietly wept.

(I didn't notice at first, since the other chair had taken over and there was a lot going on on stage. But after a minute, I'm like - wait, didn't we just see a strong woman humiliated by the democratic process? I wonder how she's doing? Oh, she's completely devastated! It's taking all her will power not to run screaming from the stage. Hey, Pierre, take a look - this must be like the worst moment of her life.)

Welcome to VanCon 2011!