Hello Pirates,
Je m'excuse de n'avoir pas un traduction de c'ette message; nous
navons pas des traducteurs qui réponderons assez vite pour
l'importance de cet e-mail. Je m'excuse aussi de mon Français
terrible. Nous avons besoin des traducteurs qui peuvent traduir
vitement e-mails, communiqués de presse et autres documents, si vous
voulez aider. Si vous avez besoin d'un traduction de cet e-mail,
répondez à moi s'il vous plaît.
I'm Sean Hunt, and I'm currently the President of the Party. With the
passing of the new constitution & bylaws earlier this month, it's time
that we get this party back on track.
WARNING: This is a long email. While you certainly can decide that
it's too long and you don't want to read through it, a lot of this
email includes information on how to help the party out and how it's
structured, so I strongly encourage you to take the time, even if not
today.
Right now, the Party is entirely a volunteer organization. Naturally,
the most important thing for a volunteer organization to have is
volunteers. The primary reason the Party ran into a lull was that the
volunteers' commitments were too long, and we ended up having to rely
on people who couldn't or wouldn't maintain the time commitment. As it
stands, I'm a part of the transition executive, which will last for
the next three weeks, so it's my job to make sure that the Party is
ready to go.
We have a long road ahead of us. Already, many Canadians are getting
quite displeased with the way that the Conservative government is
behaving in Parliament; even ones who supported the Conservatives in
the election. We have a long ways to go until October 19, 2015, which
is the most likely date of the next federal general election, and we
can use this time to drum up support and hopefully perform a
spectacular election. Let's not let the global Pirate movement stop
after Berlin.
So, here's how things are laid out in the future. If you are at all
interested in helping out or getting your voice heard, please speak
up!
General Meetings
General meetings will now be held at 8:00 PM Eastern time[2] on the
third Wednesday of each month. General meetings are the best way to
participate in the decision-making process of the Party without
putting too much volunteer effort in. Every party member has a right
to speak, to vote, and even to bring forward any issue that they would
like discussed at a general meeting. Significant decisions are also
often reserved for general meetings to decide upon. Meetings are held
over IRC, in the #canada channel on the irc.pirateparty.ca network.
For those of you without your own IRC clients, we have a number of
web-based clients on our website at https://www.pirateparty.ca/chat .
I strongly encourage all members to come out to general meetings when
they can, as they do not require much effort, but provide a great
chance to chat with other members and help shape the Party's future.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about how general
meetings are conducted, or have any questions on how best to bring
things up, don't be afraid to ask. We're all Pirates because we want
to speak up.
Executive Board
The newly-created Executive Board is the administrative
decision-making body of the Party. The Board gets to decide on such
decisions as how the Party should be managed, how to spend money, and
is responsible to ensure that the Party operates smoothly. It has five
voting members: the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary, the
Leader, and the Deputy Leader. The first three will be elected at our
next meeting on Wednesday, January 18, for a term of one year. A forum
has already been set up at
https://www.pirateparty.ca/forum/index.php?board=3D72.0 for potential
candidates to discuss their bids, and their views. I suspect that
candidates who make themselves know there, in advance, will have a
much better shot at the election.
When the meeting is held on the 18th, nominations will be taken from
the floor for each position. If you are interested in running, then
you should either show up yourself to nominate yourself---it's not bad
form to do so---or arrange for someone else to nominate you. If you
post your nomination in the forum, someone else will almost certainly
nominate you, so you should be good. After nominations are taken and
the election is discussed, we will proceed to go to a vote. The vote
will be taken by ballot,[3] and a majority vote will be required for
election, with re-balloting as necessary.[4] Since everyone voting
will be in the same place, we don't need to resort to more complicated
and less preferable means of voting.
I'll take a bit of an aside here to describe the duties of these
positions; if you aren't interested, skip ahead to the next section.
Since the Board is new, its members' duties aren't very well-defined;
they will likely find themselves with additional duties as they find
convenient. The only currently-assigned duties are to the President,
responsible for running meetings of the Party and the Executive Board;
the Vice-President, responsible for taking over if the President is
unavailable or resigns; and the Secretary, responsible for maintaining
important records such as Party documents, minutes[5] of Party and
Board meetings, as well as committee memberships and reports.
Political Council
The Political Council is the other half of the Party's governance. The
Council includes the Leader and the Deputy Leader, as well as at least
three other members elected by the Party. The Political Council, as
the name implies, is responsible for making political decisions for
the Party, such as the Party's stance on issues and how the Party
should market itself. The first elections will be in February; after
that they will mostly be held on a yearly basis around November of
each year.
The Political Council's election process will be similar to the
Executive Board's with nominations and discussion held at meeting on
February 15. The voting process, however, will be quite different.
Instead of voting at the meeting, since the makeup of the Council more
significantly affects every member of the Party, elections will be
open to all. Every member of the Party will be entitled to vote, and
the votes will be by approval voting.[6] As a result, write-in votes
are not accepted. A forum for candidates has been made at
https://www.pirateparty.ca/forum/index.php?board=3D71.0 . A warning for
anyone wishing to be Leader: if you spend any money on your campaign,
there are complex requirements with Elections Canada to meet to ensure
that the spending is fair. At this stage in the Party's evolution, I
highly recommend /not/ spending any money on your bid for Leader; it's
not worth it.
Any candidate who reaches 60% approval will be elected. Then, if the
current Leader was re-elected to the Council, he or she remains
Leader. Otherwise the role of Leader goes to the most-approved-of
candidate, and either way the Deputy Leader is the most approved-of
person other than the Leader. A candidate could, however, decline the
position of Leader or Deputy Leader if they don't feel that they can
put in the effort.
There aren't any specific duties for the Leader and Deputy Leader,
other than the Leader being the public face of the Party, and the
Deputy Leader being the backup. And, of course, both are members of
the Executive Board, which is an additional commitment.
IT Committee
The IT Committee will be responsible for maintaining the technical
infrastructure of the Party, which is a big job currently done by
mostly one person. The IT Director, the chair of the committee, will
be elected like a member of the Executive Board would and at the same
meeting. Other members will be appointed on an as-needed basis by the
Board or by general meetings. I don't believe we currently have a
forum set up for IT Director nominations or other interested people;
I'm sure that will be remedied quickly.
Candidates for Parliament
And, of course, the meat of the Party will always be the candidates,
bravely putting themselves up for election to the Kindergarten of
Canada... errr, I meant the House of Commons.
https://www.pirateparty.ca/forum/index.php?board=3D2.0 is the forum set
aside for candidates, although some of the information there is
outdated. I'll work on updating it soon. The process for appointing
candidates is currently much like that of the Executive Board, but
notice has to be given to members of the Party so that anyone wishing
to contest the nomination may do so.
It's a long ways out to the next election, but there's plenty of
reason to start now (although maybe give the Party a little bit of
time to get itself together). Do you think you'd be more likely to
vote for someone who came 'round years before the election and showed
continual dedication to the political process? I know I would.
Donations
The Party is always in need of donations. Donations are very favorable
on tax returns (you can get up to 75% of the donation back!), so
they're a great way to get added value out of your money. If you think
about it, donating $400 and getting $300 off taxes is only really
donating $100, but the Party gets $400. The contribution maximum is
$1100 per person per year. You can donate at
https://crm.pirateparty.ca/contribute.php (including if you want to
send a cheque; go there first).
Anything Else
If you have an idea for what the Party should do, or feel we're doing
something badly. Feel free to pipe up. Show up in #canada, drop by the
forums, or contact other members like myself privately. But be warned
of one thing: We are a party of volunteers with not that much
political capital and not that much economic capital. Suggestions have
been made in the past that got dropped simply because no one was
willing to do the work. So unless you're willing to put in effort
yourself, or people really like the idea, don't be too surprised if
your idea gets ignored.
Thanks, for reading this whole thing, and, of course, yarrr!
Sean Hunt
President
Pirate Party of Canada
[1] A quorum is the minimum number of members present to validly
conduct business.
[2] 5 PM Pacific; 6 PM Mountain and those parts of Saskatchewan not
observing Daylight Savings Time, during DST; 7 PM Central; 9 PM
Atlantic; and 9:30 PM in Newfoundland.
[3] Write-in candidates are allowed, although there's no particular
reason not to nominate a candidate who you want elected.
[4] Most of the procedures I'm describing here are subject to
variation by the assembled meeting. If you have any questions or want
to see it done another way, definitely drop me a line.
[5] Minutes are official record of what happened at a meeting, and are
approved at the next meeting.
[6] Approval voting consists of a yes-no vote on each candidate,
rather than voting for a single candidate.