This month's General Meeting will be held on September 25th, 2013 at 8:00pm EST at IRC. channel #canada. Server: ca.pirateirc.net. ports: 6667 (standard), 6697 (SSL). You can also login to IRC using the web interface at: https://www.pirateparty.ca/chat/  
 
Everyone is encouraged to attend as a very important matter needs to be discussed regarding the future of the Pirate Party of Canada.
 
As some of you may know we have been without a person to handle party documents and IT on a full-time basis for the past two years since the departure of the very talented Stephane Bakhos. This resulted in several issues with the website last year and resulted in filings to Elections Canada being delayed. We have had a succession of party members who have volunteered to take on the responsibility of handling the party's IT and book-keeping. This has been highly inefficient and has resulted in a backlog of administrative work.
 
Due to this we did not feel we could complete the Elections Canada mandated audit of our finances on time and requested an extention. An extention of two months was granted. Shortly afterwards it became more difficult to contact our current IT Admin. Through sporadic contact with him he stated that work with party documents was proceeding and they would be ready to send to the auditor and to not worry about it. Less than a week before the deadline we have learned from our auditor that the documents had not arrived. Our IT Admin was not immediately reachable. After the day of the deadline we were able to get in contact with him. He stated that "I have nothing done. Let it die. The party lacks a willing base of active Canadians to continue". We immediately set about removing him as it was not his job to make unilateral decisions regarding the future of the party.  
 
As it stands now we are currently trying to deliver the documents to the auditor to avoid de-registration. The last two years has highlighted several key difficulties in dealing with the administrative side of the party. Including, but not limited to, volunteer burnout, contact difficulties, concentration of authority and lack of experience. Several ideas have been floated about how to resolve these difficulties on a permanent basis and the leadership would like the memberships' input on how to proceed.
 
 

P.S. Thanks to everyone who donated in the last few months. We will try to deposit all outstanding cheques as soon as possible. We apologize for the backlog and is working hard to make sure this does not happen again in the future.