Memo to: Brad Lavigne
Re: Quebec and the NDP 50th Anniversary Convention
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Brad, those new MPs from Quebec are driving me crazy. Right after I told reporters that Quebec deserved more seats in the House, a bunch of them came to see me asking for more delegates to our upcoming 50th Anniversary conference in Vancouver. Ravignat wants to bring all 319 members of his Ottawa Medieval Sword Guild! I wasn’t sure what to tell them, so I said that the only way that could happen would be to change the NDP constitution.
The problem was that I then couldn’t find the bloody constitution. I had our 2 maids turn our houses upside-down and it was nowhere to be found. Because of this, the maids didn’t have time to clean out the hot tub and Olivia had to miss her hydrotherapy session. Needless to say, I’m in some real hot water.
I then called Ed and he spent a week searching for it. Eventually, he found a copy at his summer cottage – it was in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory in the basement. By the time he got it back to me, it was pretty grimy. Anyways, turns out we cannot change our constitution unless there is a two-thirds vote at the conference. I called Dusseault to tell him the rules and he threatened to move a motion to change it to 50% plus one.
Is this chutzpah or what?
Let’s be clear - you don’t just change constitutions – particularly a political party like the NDP. There’s a reason why we put it at two-thirds vote. Don’t they know they’re in the big leagues now? Brad, can you go over the constitution and see if there’s some sort of procedural move we can use to stop them?
Then Libby called. She wants Rabble to co-sponsor the conference and to change the name to “The NDP – 50 Years of Rabble”. Pretty clever, eh? When I told her that Rabble didn’t deserve top billing, she had a fit. She threatened to hold her breath until I agreed. Fortunately, after 40 seconds she came up for air. But, I had to give Rabble exclusivity at our award presentation for Journalist of the Year. When I told Libby that Heather Mallick was winning the award (rather than Rabble’s Gerry Caplan), she was furious! Brad, if you let Heather and Gerry share the award, Libby says she will get you a preferred seat on the Canadian Boat to Gaza. Sounds like a deal to me, no? We can all go home winners.
We also have an issue with the keynote. Judy Rebick called and said she wants to speak on “Contextualities and Discourse: Zionist Hegemony, George Bush and the Oil Economy”. Wow! Who wouldn’t want to be there for that?
Then Naomi Klein called and said her keynote, “Zionist Hegemony: Deconstructing George Bush Narratives through Iconic Imagery in the 21st Century” was all set to go.
What a 1-2 punch!
Then, out of the blue, Sunera Thobani texted me to say she was ready with “The Capitalist Voicing The Queer: George Bush, Theory and Collusion.”
Imagine the riches at our Conference!
The problem is that we only have room for 2 keynotes. Brad, what should we do? At the last Conference, Rebick kicked me in the shins when I insisted her speech couldn’t be over 3 hours. Can you imagine what she’ll kick if she doesn’t get a keynote at our 50th?
Help!
Jack
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