How six months can change a party

[CHIMO]

Fifty years ago this month, the Liberal Party of Canada was broke, demoralized after two consecutive defeats, and fighting off threats from other parties to take over their core progressive base.

Yet, starting on Sept. 6, 1960, when 200 individuals paid a fee of $25 and their room and board at Queen’s University to debate each other for five days in what was billed as a “Study Conference on National Problems,” the Liberal party began an astonishing comeback.

The conference, organized to engage non-partisans, was followed within three months by a national party rally where thousands of Liberals, in turn, debated and prioritized ideas. Then with its thinking clear and the party re-energized, a “leader’s advisory committee” took the results of this work and transformed them into a platform of 75 proposals.

Six months after Kingston, the Liberal party was competitive again. In the 1962 election, it humbled the Conservatives, and in 1963 formed a government that passed into law the platform mix of social and economic policies that have governed us ever since. Six months of sustained party effort eventually changed Canada. Today’s Liberals, in not nearly as desperate a predicament as their predecessors, should take heart.

http://www.thestar.com/article/859633--how-six-months-can-change-a-party