Change of Season
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
This fall represents quite a change of season in my life. After much careful consideration, consultating with the National Campaign Committee, time spent talking to people in the riding, I decided that Saanich-Gulf Islands is the part of the country where most voters really want a chance to elect a Green and change Parliament. So, I have packed up and have made the trek across the country to settle into my new community. The moving van arrives on Monday and I will be in my new house in Sidney British Columbia! While this puts me at the very opposite end of the country from my daughter, she is so happy and enthusiastic about the Foundation Year Programme at Kings College this year in Halifax, that we are both off on new adventures and positive about the change.
Saanich-Gulf Islands is a great place to run for many reasons – the people there embody small ‘g’ values and they are willing to make history (they will always be remembered for electing Tommy Douglas). I have worked on environmental issues in BC for many many years and feel a deep connection to this beautiful coast and its people.
The welcome I have received from the people of my new community have made this transition a positive and exciting time. Many local people have come up to me to tell me they are thrilled to have me and they are ready to work on my campaign. Of course, first I have to win the nomination. Unique to any other political party, there will be a challenger to my nomination and at the meeting on September 19th at Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney, Green Party members of Saanich-Gulf Islands will choose between myself and Victoria resident Stuart Hertzog for their candidate. Yes, democracy is alive and well in the Green Party. (Let me reassure party members that, despite claims to the contrary from the other candidate, my campaign team is scrupulously following the rules surrounding the nomination contest.)
I have been overwhelmed by the positive response from Greens in Saanich-Gulf Islands and from British Columbia in general! The thumbs up from traffic cops, the “good luck” wishes from ferry staff and people in farmer’s markets, all confirm my sense that Saanich-Gulf Islands holds the green key to our future.
An election could soon be upon us soon and so please consider volunteering some time, both to your local campaign and to my campaign, if you can. This election we will make history and have the Greens in the House!
Change of Season
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
This fall represents quite a change of season in my life. After much careful consideration, consultating with the National Campaign Committee, time spent talking to people in the riding, I decided that Saanich-Gulf Islands is the part of the country where most voters really want a chance to elect a Green and change Parliament. So, I have packed up and have made the trek across the country to settle into my new community. The moving van arrives on Monday and I will be in my new house in Sidney British Columbia! While this puts me at the very opposite end of the country from my daughter, she is so happy and enthusiastic about the Foundation Year Programme at Kings College this year in Halifax, that we are both off on new adventures and positive about the change.
Saanich-Gulf Islands is a great place to run for many reasons – the people there embody small ‘g’ values and they are willing to make history (they will always be remembered for electing Tommy Douglas). I have worked on environmental issues in BC for many many years and feel a deep connection to this beautiful coast and its people.
The welcome I have received from the people of my new community have made this transition a positive and exciting time. Many local people have come up to me to tell me they are thrilled to have me and they are ready to work on my campaign. Of course, first I have to win the nomination. Unique to any other political party, there will be a challenger to my nomination and at the meeting on September 19th at Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney, Green Party members of Saanich-Gulf Islands will choose between myself and Victoria resident Stuart Hertzog for their candidate. Yes, democracy is alive and well in the Green Party. (Let me reassure party members that, despite claims to the contrary from the other candidate, my campaign team is scrupulously following the rules surrounding the nomination contest.)
I have been overwhelmed by the positive response from Greens in Saanich-Gulf Islands and from British Columbia in general! The thumbs up from traffic cops, the “good luck” wishes from ferry staff and people in farmer’s markets, all confirm my sense that Saanich-Gulf Islands holds the green key to our future.
An election could soon be upon us soon and so please consider volunteering some time, both to your local campaign and to my campaign, if you can. This election we will make history and have the Greens in the House!
“Harper’s Team” reviewed: Lessons for the Green Party“
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
Cross posted from `Not an Official Greem Party Site` dated February 2009
Two weeks ago I picked up a copy of “Harper’s Team” by Tom Flanagan. I had seen a recommendation in Report on Greens, and being naturally interested in a first hand view of how the conditions were created for the rise of the Conservative Party from `has been` to the currently dominant political force in Canada.
I have spent, (according to my wife, wasted), thousands of hours canvassing, fund raising, devising and designing GOTV programs, implementing databases, and data management programs on behalf of various GPC campaigns. The sundry challenging tasks of Green Party cat herding, that some call campaign management have taken their toll. I yearned to find the secrets to how to really make it work. ‘Surely’, I asked myself, ‘there is some magic potion that these Conservative rascals imbibed to bring them invincible strength? Perhaps the formula lies between the dusty covers of this rare tome?’
Now I can reveal the truth to my readers. Nope, no magic potions here. Once again, the truth’s within those dusty (actually shiny new) covers is prosaic. The most important thing about it is that it doesn’t come from an obscure Green activist, and businessman crying ‘but it’s OBVIOUS what we have to do.’ It is coming from the Campaign Manager that deployed prosaic tools and organizational principles to seize power within our Parliamentary Democracy.
My first comment is a negative. This book isn’t a work by a master of communication and disinformation like Warren Kinsella. Kinsella’s book, “The War Room” rambles a bit, and is kind of heavy in the name dropping, and self congratulation departments, but you have no doubt that you are imbibing the real brew.
What this book is, is a well written eye witness narrative of Harpers career from 2002 on. It shines a light on the early history of the Alliance, and the subsequent PC merger that gave birth to the CPC. I won’t go through the nitty gritty of who did what, with whom, and for whoever. I will once again filter the book for lessons for the Green Party to apply.
Start every campaign with analysis, and a plan. SWOT analysis, familiar to business managers stands for Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat. Look objectively at all sides of the equation. Develop a strategy to maximise, minimise, exploit, and counteract respectively. Sounds easy? It isn’t. It needs to be concise, and readily grasped and expanded on by a whole team of individuals.
From that starting point, develop the campaign theme, and message. This shouldn’t be an ad hoc exercise. You might start with a gut feel, but you pursue professionally conducted political issues research. That means opinion polling, with a focus on what messages, and presentation will achieve your strategic ends. For example, if you are the strong front-runner, and your primary objective is to protect your lead, and resist encroachment, then you will research amongst supporters to determine why they support you, and what message is most likely to re-enforce this support.
The structure of the campaign is important. To a certain extent, the strategy will be formulated based upon the skills available. The managers task is to ensure that the right skills, and people are in place to implement the plan. A strong chair is essential, because there will always be stress and tension within the team. The Chair must ensure that the team ends up pulling together. That means managing, and yes, even manipulating these tensions to spur on better results.
Flanagan stresses the importance of advance planning of the campaign based upon a campaign calendar. My personal opinion is that the emphasis on planning every single day of the Campaign which he believed was essential proved to be the CPC’s undoing in the 2008 campaign. Their plan was so rigid, that they continued to try to control and direct the message, even while stock markets were collapsing around them. They failed to adapt, and it made them look totally out of touch for the tail end of the Campaign. Kinsella understood the need for adaptability, and stresses that again and again in his book. Had Kinsella run the Conservative War Room, we would probably have a CPC majority government today.
For the actual mechanics of campaigning, this is where Flanagans book gets really interesting. Arguably the single most important tool that the CPC and Stephen Harper have employed is direct mail fund raising. In different circumstances, his various campaigns were able to direct hard hitting, very specific appeals for cash to their various mailing lists. There would always be some specific objective and appeal. Not just a generic, ‘give us some cash’ but more like, ‘together, we need to stop X,Y, and Z happening. We need this much to do it. Give generously using this postage paid reply envelope.’ Every campaign started with such direct appeals, and they really worked. The CPC continues to go back to the well again, and again, and this tool forms the basis of their financial muscle.
Another interesting outreach tool discussed in depth by Flanagan is various types of phone bank. One of the earliest tools employed was predictive dialler’s. Flanagan assumes his reader knows what this is, but for the uninitiated, I’ll offer a brief description. A computer can be adapted with a special phone board to manage multiple phone connections at once. A single board can handle up to 32 separate lines at once. Predictive dialling software/hardware setups will automatically dial 32 people at once, and there will be a number of separate phone operators networked with this dialler. When someone receives such a call, they can either be patched through immediately to a live operator, or they could have pre-recorded option presented to them like ‘dial two to speak to an operator’. Using fairly small teams of volunteers, the campaign can plow through large numbers of phone calls fairly quickly. More sophisticated types of dialling technology can be employed, depending upon the task being performed, and the numbers involved.
The lessons ultimately learned by Flanagan were as follows: For ID’ing the vote, on a really large scale, the best way to make a large number of these relatively simple phone calls is to hire a professional telemarketing firm. There is little, or no persuasion going on, other than a few simple stock pitches, so paid telemarketers can do this very efficiently indeed. The calls can be targetted by sorting a large database to separate the polls which had good Conservative (or Green), turnouts in past elections. That way, the best response rates can be guaranteed. The CPC does this ongoing, even outside of election periods. It enables them to build up supporter databases so they can go to these people to Get Out The Vote in future campaigns, and it gives them hot pre-qualified prospect lists for their direct mail fund raising letters.
For persuasion type phone banking, volunteers are better. They will generally have more policy knowledge, and more interest in spending some time persuading people to change their vote. The Conservatives actually own their own predictive dialler’s, and set up phone banks in their War Room, or wherever the volunteers can most easily be gathered. They use these teams to target undecided voters, to convert them to Conservatives. They will also target soft supporters of the other Party’s. As I have mentioned elsewhere, they could have the twin objectives of either converting these votes, or suppressing turnout for the opposition Party’s. Volunteers are much better at raising money as well. Because they cost nothing in wages, and can be more adaptable, a volunteer phone bank can generally be relied on to break even, or even turn a small ‘profit’ by asking for donations as part of their standard pitch. Any type of phone banking can be targeted anywhere in the country. If the campaign calls for an extra effort in one particular riding, then all the phone banks can concentrate on it, until it has been thoroughly canvassed, and persuaded. Obviously, this calls for good data management, and co-ordination.
The Data management discussed was, in my opinion, the single most important innovation of the Harper team. They invested some pretty serious money in creating a single database hosted by the National Party headquarters. The reason this was so important is because, just like the Green Party, the majority of the contacts made at the local level during a campaign would not be recorded, or preserved between elections. These supporters would therefore not be accesable to co-ordinated fund-raising efforts. They would also be lost before the next campaign, and the voter ID effort would have to begin from scratch. The Green Party of Canada has made some feeble efforts along these lines with their CIVICRM, but frankly the software is crap, and no-one in their right mind would base their campaign data management on such a time consuming clunky piece of junk. What is needed is a fluent, easy to use database. It needs to have easy user interfaces, and should be blindingly fast, no matter how many users there are.
Flanagan wrote a lot about message, and the air war. The air war consists of advertising, plus earned media. Frankly, while it makes for OK reading for a campaign buff like myself, if you want to learn about communications, read Warren Kinsella’s “The War Room”.
In conclusion, the Conservative Party has many lessons to teach the Green Party of Canada. It’s not that the Green Party doesn’t know these lessons. It’s more that they need to have their noses rubbed in the fact that Yes, these things work, and are capable of propelling an extremist party into government when used correctly. (hint hint)
“Harper’s Team” reviewed: Lessons for the Green Party“
“Harper’s Team” reviewed: Lessons for the Green Party“
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
Cross posted from `Not an Official Greem Party Site` dated February 2009
Two weeks ago I picked up a copy of “Harper’s Team” by Tom Flanagan. I had seen a recommendation in Report on Greens, and being naturally interested in a first hand view of how the conditions were created for the rise of the Conservative Party from `has been` to the currently dominant political force in Canada.
I have spent, (according to my wife, wasted), thousands of hours canvassing, fund raising, devising and designing GOTV programs, implementing databases, and data management programs on behalf of various GPC campaigns. The sundry challenging tasks of Green Party cat herding, that some call campaign management have taken their toll. I yearned to find the secrets to how to really make it work. ‘Surely’, I asked myself, ‘there is some magic potion that these Conservative rascals imbibed to bring them invincible strength? Perhaps the formula lies between the dusty covers of this rare tome?’
Now I can reveal the truth to my readers. Nope, no magic potions here. Once again, the truth’s within those dusty (actually shiny new) covers is prosaic. The most important thing about it is that it doesn’t come from an obscure Green activist, and businessman crying ‘but it’s OBVIOUS what we have to do.’ It is coming from the Campaign Manager that deployed prosaic tools and organizational principles to seize power within our Parliamentary Democracy.
My first comment is a negative. This book isn’t a work by a master of communication and disinformation like Warren Kinsella. Kinsella’s book, “The War Room” rambles a bit, and is kind of heavy in the name dropping, and self congratulation departments, but you have no doubt that you are imbibing the real brew.
What this book is, is a well written eye witness narrative of Harpers career from 2002 on. It shines a light on the early history of the Alliance, and the subsequent PC merger that gave birth to the CPC. I won’t go through the nitty gritty of who did what, with whom, and for whoever. I will once again filter the book for lessons for the Green Party to apply.
Start every campaign with analysis, and a plan. SWOT analysis, familiar to business managers stands for Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat. Look objectively at all sides of the equation. Develop a strategy to maximise, minimise, exploit, and counteract respectively. Sounds easy? It isn’t. It needs to be concise, and readily grasped and expanded on by a whole team of individuals.
From that starting point, develop the campaign theme, and message. This shouldn’t be an ad hoc exercise. You might start with a gut feel, but you pursue professionally conducted political issues research. That means opinion polling, with a focus on what messages, and presentation will achieve your strategic ends. For example, if you are the strong front-runner, and your primary objective is to protect your lead, and resist encroachment, then you will research amongst supporters to determine why they support you, and what message is most likely to re-enforce this support.
The structure of the campaign is important. To a certain extent, the strategy will be formulated based upon the skills available. The managers task is to ensure that the right skills, and people are in place to implement the plan. A strong chair is essential, because there will always be stress and tension within the team. The Chair must ensure that the team ends up pulling together. That means managing, and yes, even manipulating these tensions to spur on better results.
Flanagan stresses the importance of advance planning of the campaign based upon a campaign calendar. My personal opinion is that the emphasis on planning every single day of the Campaign which he believed was essential proved to be the CPC’s undoing in the 2008 campaign. Their plan was so rigid, that they continued to try to control and direct the message, even while stock markets were collapsing around them. They failed to adapt, and it made them look totally out of touch for the tail end of the Campaign. Kinsella understood the need for adaptability, and stresses that again and again in his book. Had Kinsella run the Conservative War Room, we would probably have a CPC majority government today.
For the actual mechanics of campaigning, this is where Flanagans book gets really interesting. Arguably the single most important tool that the CPC and Stephen Harper have employed is direct mail fund raising. In different circumstances, his various campaigns were able to direct hard hitting, very specific appeals for cash to their various mailing lists. There would always be some specific objective and appeal. Not just a generic, ‘give us some cash’ but more like, ‘together, we need to stop X,Y, and Z happening. We need this much to do it. Give generously using this postage paid reply envelope.’ Every campaign started with such direct appeals, and they really worked. The CPC continues to go back to the well again, and again, and this tool forms the basis of their financial muscle.
Another interesting outreach tool discussed in depth by Flanagan is various types of phone bank. One of the earliest tools employed was predictive dialler’s. Flanagan assumes his reader knows what this is, but for the uninitiated, I’ll offer a brief description. A computer can be adapted with a special phone board to manage multiple phone connections at once. A single board can handle up to 32 separate lines at once. Predictive dialling software/hardware setups will automatically dial 32 people at once, and there will be a number of separate phone operators networked with this dialler. When someone receives such a call, they can either be patched through immediately to a live operator, or they could have pre-recorded option presented to them like ‘dial two to speak to an operator’. Using fairly small teams of volunteers, the campaign can plow through large numbers of phone calls fairly quickly. More sophisticated types of dialling technology can be employed, depending upon the task being performed, and the numbers involved.
The lessons ultimately learned by Flanagan were as follows: For ID’ing the vote, on a really large scale, the best way to make a large number of these relatively simple phone calls is to hire a professional telemarketing firm. There is little, or no persuasion going on, other than a few simple stock pitches, so paid telemarketers can do this very efficiently indeed. The calls can be targetted by sorting a large database to separate the polls which had good Conservative (or Green), turnouts in past elections. That way, the best response rates can be guaranteed. The CPC does this ongoing, even outside of election periods. It enables them to build up supporter databases so they can go to these people to Get Out The Vote in future campaigns, and it gives them hot pre-qualified prospect lists for their direct mail fund raising letters.
For persuasion type phone banking, volunteers are better. They will generally have more policy knowledge, and more interest in spending some time persuading people to change their vote. The Conservatives actually own their own predictive dialler’s, and set up phone banks in their War Room, or wherever the volunteers can most easily be gathered. They use these teams to target undecided voters, to convert them to Conservatives. They will also target soft supporters of the other Party’s. As I have mentioned elsewhere, they could have the twin objectives of either converting these votes, or suppressing turnout for the opposition Party’s. Volunteers are much better at raising money as well. Because they cost nothing in wages, and can be more adaptable, a volunteer phone bank can generally be relied on to break even, or even turn a small ‘profit’ by asking for donations as part of their standard pitch. Any type of phone banking can be targeted anywhere in the country. If the campaign calls for an extra effort in one particular riding, then all the phone banks can concentrate on it, until it has been thoroughly canvassed, and persuaded. Obviously, this calls for good data management, and co-ordination.
The Data management discussed was, in my opinion, the single most important innovation of the Harper team. They invested some pretty serious money in creating a single database hosted by the National Party headquarters. The reason this was so important is because, just like the Green Party, the majority of the contacts made at the local level during a campaign would not be recorded, or preserved between elections. These supporters would therefore not be accesable to co-ordinated fund-raising efforts. They would also be lost before the next campaign, and the voter ID effort would have to begin from scratch. The Green Party of Canada has made some feeble efforts along these lines with their CIVICRM, but frankly the software is crap, and no-one in their right mind would base their campaign data management on such a time consuming clunky piece of junk. What is needed is a fluent, easy to use database. It needs to have easy user interfaces, and should be blindingly fast, no matter how many users there are.
Flanagan wrote a lot about message, and the air war. The air war consists of advertising, plus earned media. Frankly, while it makes for OK reading for a campaign buff like myself, if you want to learn about communications, read Warren Kinsella’s “The War Room”.
In conclusion, the Conservative Party has many lessons to teach the Green Party of Canada. It’s not that the Green Party doesn’t know these lessons. It’s more that they need to have their noses rubbed in the fact that Yes, these things work, and are capable of propelling an extremist party into government when used correctly. (hint hint)
“Harper’s Team” reviewed: Lessons for the Green Party“
"Recovery? What Recovery? Whose Recovery?"
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
Here’s an article from the Progressive Economics Forum. It will appeal more to the progressive contingent of the GPC. It touches on some policy issues that need to be addressed for Canada to have a fairer system for everyone.
"Recovery? What Recovery? Whose Recovery?"
A novel use of stimulus spending
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
Perhaps the federal government should use some of the “stimulus” money to build proper infrastructure for the Indian communities instead of sending hand sanitizer and body bags. I’m sure the aboriginal communities would appreciate that hand up rather than the meager handout currently being provided. It is a disgrace that these communities don’t have proper sanitation that the rest of us take for granted.
A novel use of stimulus spending
"Recovery? What Recovery? Whose Recovery?"
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
Here’s an article from the Progressive Economics Forum. It will appeal more to the progressive contingent of the GPC. It touches on some policy issues that need to be addressed for Canada to have a fairer system for everyone.
"Recovery? What Recovery? Whose Recovery?"
Noam Chomsky on why Canada is in Afghanistan
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
Just found this: Noam Chomsky on why Canada is in Afghanistan.
Noam Chomsky on why Canada is in Afghanistan
A novel use of stimulus spending
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
Perhaps the federal government should use some of the “stimulus” money to build proper infrastructure for the Indian communities instead of sending hand sanitizer and body bags. I’m sure the aboriginal communities would appreciate that hand up rather than the meager handout currently being provided. It is a disgrace that these communities don’t have proper sanitation that the rest of us take for granted.
A novel use of stimulus spending
Building a Future; Not Rebuilding the Past.
September 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Green Party Blogs
Are we only too eager to push on the gas pedal rather than the brakes when it comes to our fragile economy?
It would seem we can’t quite come to grips as to shifting gears from the past to the future in an effective and meaningful manner.
Case in point … the current provincially driven re-training programming (Second Career) of which most if not all of you will have heard about, has seen many people retrained for a ‘new’ occupation or career, while others have ‘upskilled or ‘cross-skilled’ within their current career. Some of the Second Career initiative has indeed helped many people and we do need a concrete plan of action, that much is absolutely true and staring us in the face. To a degree, there will be people who have retrained or will retrain towards sustainable occupations; occupations which will drive us away from and not towards the cliff.
Second Career (S.C.) programming has helped alleviate some of the immediate and justifiable fear felt by many in the general public in relation to the high volume of unemployment within the province of Ontario and across the country. But it has not been a simple and straightforward road, and it is not black and white.
Those in the government driver’s seat perhaps did not obtain a safety inspection nor have on hand a reliable ‘road map’ before ramping out S.C. programming. Rather, they left the garage without clear directions and have mustered along ’somewhat’ in the dark. I heard an interesting comment by a very astute young woman in the Green Party … a phrase to which most people can relate.
Are we still looking in the rear-view mirror when planning for and choosing our occupations, or are we scoping out actual ‘opportunities’ in the road that lies ahead of us?
Where are the roadside caution signs? All too often, individuals enter retraining for occupations which may well result in an over-saturated market or even a declining market. It has ultimately resulted in an unanticipated ‘cash cow’ for many institutions, some of which are offering double and triple shifts per day for their programs simply to keep up with the demand. But the milk being served as to such a ‘cash cow’ might be a tad bit sour. Maybe not right away, but there could be an expiry date on the euphoria. It is especially alarming when the occupations or programs being marketed and accessed do not help to ‘move us forward’ along the road to true sustainability, but rather, are a mere reflection and perpetuation of our past errors in judgement.
I worry that despite the monies being distributed for this programming, we have in some ways put the cart before the proverbial horse; certainly, we have not adequately prepared the academic institutions beholden with this high level responsibility for their extremely important role within this economic rebuilding puzzle.
Academic institutions are key to rebuilding our economy towards a more sustainable model but they cannot do it alone; they need the tools to do so effectively and conscientiously. It is time we put into place a government ‘economic and academic’ infrastructure plan which truly develops a model for the road ahead.
Some additional reading to ponder, from within and beyond the GPC site:
I am curious as to how many of you know of someone who has taken advantage of this retraining program due to a layoff; is the individual in a program which will help them ‘plan for the future’ (a more green economic recovery), or are they planning to continue on or shift to a role within a rather grey economy of the past? And what are your thoughts and knowledge on this topic. Please share.
Cathy Mott
Past (2008) Federal Green Party Candiidate; Oxford County, ON
