Trip Diary: Calgary

After a much-needed Sunday break canoeing, hiking and hot-spring bathing in Banff, Suzanne and I returned to Calgary for a very full day of meetings. This was our one-instance of back-tracking in the whole itinerary, but the sheer beauty of Banff made it well worthwhile.

Ron with Michelle Robinson and daughter

The morning began with a 7:30 am breakfast meeting with Ana Petrunic, president of Calgary East, and some of her board members. One of the most active of Calgary ridings, it provided a heartening example of how a few committed people can revive a previously defunct EDA (to the extent of requiring re-registration) in relatively short order. Their approach, which heavily emphasizes engaging with the community, parallels what I have been writing about for some time.

There followed a morning meeting at the home of Margaret McLeod, past candidate for Calgary-Nose Hill and board members of her equally active riding. Margaret is in the process of reading George Lakeoff’s “The Political Brain”, a book which I strongly recommend as required reading for anyone who wants to understand just how the well-funded US-based neo-conservative movement has so successfully manipulated public thinking in the direction of their narrow and ultimately destructive world view over the past several decades, and how to counter it.

The meeting became an in-depth discussion of political branding, during which I received lots of useful feedback to my draft strategic plan for rebuilding our Party over the next four years. One especially valuable insight related to the deep-pocketed Harper propaganda machine’s success in undermining both M. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff. Neither had a sufficiently well-established national “brand” on assuming the Liberal leadership. That made it easy for the machine’s attack ads to apply their own negative brands on each of them and make them stick. Jack Layton, by contrast, already had an established brand, which shields against such attacks. Our next Leader is likely to either come with political baggage or similarly lack an established brand, and the Conservative attack playbook is ready for either eventuality. While it is fortunate that we now have two years to prepare, it’s critical that we use that time to come up with a truly effective counter-strategy which can be fine-tuned and executed as soon as the Leader is chosen. I believe that strategy must be far more than just an advertising war chest.

In the afternoon, I had a most enjoyable meeting with National Policy Chair, Joan Bourassa, with whom I had worked closely for the past several years on the En Famille initiative.

The evening meeting, organized by Calgary Regional Chair Dawn Litzenberger, was open to all Calgary ridings. Members were very engaged and asked lots of good questions, which extended the meeting past the two-and-a-half hour mark. As in virtually all previous sessions, my objective of cleaning up the nomination process was enthusiastically received. Members spoke of the difficulty in recruiting candidates and the impacts on the riding association when it proves necessary for the PTA to find one from outside the riding. This paralleled the Friday discussion in Canmore where I was told the riding hoped to find a local candidate who would be there for the long haul, willing to run in three successive elections if necessary and to campaign between each one to gradually build up the Liberal base.

Barry, a past candidate, outlined a concrete proposal which I believe has considerable merit and should be pursued. The idea is to pre-approve potential candidates for future elections as early as possible rather than waiting until closer to the writ period. Such “green-lit” contestants would not only be free to begin campaigning but would be expected to do so. Ideally, there would be more than one, which would lead to a contested nomination. Potential candidates would have ample time to engage with their riding associations and members to judge each contestant’s campaigning, fundraising and other relevant skills. Barry is in the process of documenting his proposal, which he intends to submit to the Party. While I’m looking forward to seeing the details in his full document, his oral description struck me as one of the best ideas that I’ve heard to date for addressing a number of the challenges facing the rural Western ridings which I have been visiting.

We have now left Calgary heading further West for the British Columbia border and a lunch meeting in Revelstoke. We’ll return to Alberta via a more northerly route after our BC swing.