Thoughts on Party Renewal

"Our Party needs to be fixed. I intend to fix it."

Leader Ralph Klein, November 29, 2004

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to submit to the Party's Renewal Committee, which I did, and in response I was personally invited to attend the Renewal meeting held here in Edmonton. The meeting was open to everyone (with a membership), but after recieving a personal invitation I couldn't say no. Not that I would have, this party is important to me and I am prepared to work to save it. On Nov 29 the Premier was speaking to members like me, people who had seen the problems and cared enough to work towards fixing them; people who needed their leader to do the same. Now all we have to do is engage the rest of the membership, and make them believe. It's going to be a busy four months.

I thought that our meeting had gone well, attended by MLA's, Ministers, Candidates, and mostly high level campaign team workers. The table I was teamed with had alot of intimate experience with this past election and the issues we discussed were commonly identified which made it interesting that we had a similiar experiences - it was also validating. When it came time to make our oral submission to the committee (our overall impressions of the campaign and then outline one single priority for the Party today) my table chose my priority to present, which was well recieved by the room. That made me feel glad I had made it out to the meeting, especially after a long work day and the boring bus ride downtown I faced to get there. It was promising. I am looking forward to the next step.