Please note that I've tried to restrict this to examples (not enumerations) of important stuff -generally ignoring obvious typos and grammar errors like the "s" in "3.1.2 indicates their intention". There are a lot of these but this discussion isn't about proofreading, it's about content.
Comments here are based on the proposed 2010 Constitution (PDF) and the current version (PDF) as downloaded from the party website on June 7th, 2010.
The document has many "VM notes" like this one, describing "Section 8 - Leader":
Comment [VM8]: Changes to this section include adding the first two sentences which spell out the role and duties of the leader. There is also a clarification that Leader elections will be by preferential ballot. And that the members get to decide on the term of the Leader and on Leadership reviews.
These should be read cynically - actual changes in this particular section include:
Thus the current version:
5(a) The Leader shall be elected by the members of the Party by ballot, and must receive a majority. If no candidate receives a majority after the first ballot, the balloting shall be repeated as many times as necessary to obtain a majority vote for a single candidate. The candidate receiving the lowest number of votes will be removed from the next ballot....
5(c) To be entitled to vote in a Leadership Vote one must have been a member in good standing of the Party for the fourteen (14) days immediately prior to the date of the vote.
Has been "clarified" to completely change the process and, rather counter-intuitively for a "clarification", confuses matters by merging a paragraph on voting eligibility into the paragraph defining the new procedure:
The Leader shall be elected by the members of the Party using a preferential ballot, and must receive a majority. To be entitled to vote in a Leadership Vote a member must have been a member in good standing of the Party for the fourteen (14) days immediately prior to the date of the vote.
5(g) The Executive Committee shall establish the procedures and mechanisms, including appropriate telephonic and computer technology, not inconsistent with the provisions hereof, whereby the Leadership Vote shall be conducted.
becomes:
8.10 The Executive Committee shall establish the procedures and mechanisms, including appropriate telephonic and computer technology, not inconsistent with the provisions of this Constitution, whereby the Leadership Vote shall be conducted. The Executive Committee is the final authority on any dispute related to the Leadership Vote.(Emphasis added.)
Despite the seemingly rather disingenuous assurance in the "VM6" note to the revised Section 6:
[VM6]: The changes in this section make it clear that General meetings are where the Party is controlled and governed. Other minor changes include making it clear that not every general meeting activity need happen at every general meeting.
this section embeds some of the most significant changes in the constitution - "minor" stuff like replacing open executive committee elections with secret ballots without specifying anything about processes, auditability, or verification.
For example section 6.f.3 of the existing constitution says:
A Resolutions and Bylaws Amendments Committee whose duties are to prepare a call for and accept Resolutions and Bylaws Amendments; to review and comment on all resolutions and Bylaws amendments submitted for consideration by the members at the General Meeting. The Resolutions and Bylaws Amendments Committee will ensure that all resolutions submitted to it are provided to all members.(Emphasis added)
While the revised version, in 6.9.2, says:
A Policy and Constitution Committee whose duties are to prepare a call for and accept policy resolutions and Constitution amendments; to review and comment on all policy resolutions and Constitution amendments submitted for consideration by the members at the General Meeting. The Policy and Constitution Committee will ensure that all resolutions submitted to it are made available to all members.(Emphasis added)
The apparently minor wording change: from "provided to all members" to "available to all members" is repeated in section 12.3 (another section described in a VM as having "No substantive changes") and legitimizes the unconstitutional procedure adopted this year in which the resolutions were not provided to the members - who were told, instead, that they would be able to download the policy document from the web.
Five notes about this:
All duly proposed Principles and Policies or amendments to existing Principles and Policies shall be sent to Party members no less than sixty (60) days prior to the date of the next scheduled General Meeting.
survived into the new version despite not having been met this year.
10.3 Notice of the call for proposed Principles and Policies or amendments to existing Principles and Policies shall be sent to all Party members no less than one hundred and twenty (120) days prior to the date of the next scheduled General Meeting. All proposed Principles and Policies or amendments to existing Principles and Policies shall be submitted to the Chairman of the Policy and Constitution Committee in writing as a Notice of Motion at least ninety (90) days prior to the date of the next scheduled General Meeting. All duly proposed Principles and Policies or amendments to existing Principles and Policies shall be made available to Party members no less than sixty (60) days prior to the date of the next scheduled General Meeting.(Emphasis added)
(Note that web notification came at 11:10 AM on May 21st as the middle of three paragraphs in an email from "webmaster" headed "Three Updates":
There was a problem with the link to the Constitutional amendment resolutions. Go to www.wildrosealliance.ca/2010agm/constitution to see the resolutions. Our apologies.
However, no other email from the party was received here during the period between the date stamp in the document and the arrival of the "three updates" message from which the paragraph above is quoted.)
VII (f) Minutes of the Executive Committee meetings shall be provided to Executive Committee members and to Presidents of recognized Constituency Associations
One of the glaring lacunae in the present constitution becomes obvious when you ask how the CAs influence party policy or what authority they have with respect to the party's central administrative functions.
The existing constitution does have some provisions on this: we can force special general meetings, propose policy or constitutional amendments, are supposed to review minutes from executive committee meetings, have a key role to play in internal disciplinary proceedings, and have control, subject to candidate acceptance by the party leader, of the candidate nomination process.
In general, however, the motivating assumption behind the existing constitution is that members control the party and delegate some of their powers to the leader, some to Executive Committee (which, in turn can delegate to hirees or volunteers), and some to their local CA boards.
The animating assumption in the 2010 draft appears to be the reverse of this. Thus there is more detail about CA obligations, less detail about CA rights - more verbiage about member empowerment, but less empowerment.
For example this long and messy paragraph from the current version:
(d) Subject to Article XIII(c) above and the other provisions of these Bylaws, the affairs of each Constituency Association shall be under the control of its members, acting through the Constituency Association Board of Directors who shall be responsible to ensure that the said affairs are conducted in a manner consistent with the principles and policies of the Party, the Bylaws of the Party and the Bylaws of the Constituency Association, and not prejudicial to the interests or well-being of any other Constituency Association of the Party, or of the Party. Where the number of members of the Party residing in the constituency in which the Constituency Association was formed becomes less than fifteen (15) members, the Executive Committee in its absolute discretion may withdraw recognition of the Constituency Association whereupon it shall cease to be a Constituency Association of the Party, and any funds or other assets of the Constituency Association shall be transferred to the Provincial Office of the Party, to be returned to the Constituency Association upon reactivation.
becomes:
Subject to 4.3 above and the other provisions of this Constitution, the affairs of each Constituency Association shall be under the control of its members, acting through the Constituency Association Board of Directors who shall be responsible to ensure that the said affairs are conducted in a manner consistent with the Principles and Policies of the Party, this Constitution and the Bylaws of the Constituency Association, and not prejudicial to the interests or well-being of any other Party Constituency Association, or of the Party.
4.5 Constituency Associations shall comply with such requirements as to their governance, financial management and reporting, as may be implemented by Executive Committee. Recognition of a Constituency Association may be revoked pursuant to rules and procedures set out by Executive Committee, per the Election Act. Recognition may also be revoked, at the discretion of Executive Committee, if Association membership falls below fifteen (15) members.
4.5.1 Upon the revocation of recognition of a Constituency Association any funds or other assets of the Constituency Association shall be transferred to the Party, to be returned to the Constituency Association upon reactivation.
(Emphasis added)
In that same vein, CA's lose control of the nomination process: thus subsection "e" of article XII in the current version:
12.(e) Once approved by a Constituency Association, new party candidates may be rejected on the initiative of the Leader, but only after approval by a majority of the Executive Committee, consulted if necessary individually.
becomes:
11.1 Executive Committee shall create rules and procedures for the selection of candidates. The Executive Committee shall establish the Candidate Selection Committee that shall have the right to disallow the candidacy of any person before or after nomination by the Constituency association, subject to the appeal of such a decision to Executive Committee whose decision shall be final.11.2 The rules shall provide for a Constituency Nomination Committee in each constituency that shall, subject to the rules, be responsible for the administration of the candidate selection process in the constituency.
4.7 Every Constituency Association shall provide organizational and financial support to the Party's candidate in their constituency.
(Emphasis added)
By themselves changes like these may seem sensible enough - but they're part of a larger picture in which the assurance in section 4.1 of the new version:
The Constituency Association is the primary organization through which the rights of members are exercised
substitutes member agitation at the CA level for today's member control at the AGM level and can be understood in context to mean that those rights are intended to exist and end at the CA level - because all mechanisms through which member control is transmitted from the CAs to caucus, the executive committee, and the bureaucracy are considerably weakened in this draft while top down control is comparably strengthened.
Word choice is important - particularly in a legal document - and someone needs to edit this thing to correct unprofessional word use, correct embarrasing errors, remove inconsistencies, and edit out unsupported and unthought through distinctions and/or statements of opinion.
Examples:
The most repeated word use error in this document confuses "citizen" with some version of "we the people of Alberta." This is almost always wrong because the term "citizen" has a strict legal meaning.
Consider, for example, the first part of section 2.4:
We believe in the inherent value and dignity of each individual citizen;2.4.1 that all citizens are equal before the law and entitled to fundamental justice;
2.4.2 that all citizens have certain fundamental and immutable rights and freedoms, including:
- 2.4.2.1 the right to life, safety, liberty, and privacy;
It's true that the law treats citizens and non citizens differently and that the two classes of resident have different legal obligations to Canada - but as a party we cannot believe that non citizens don't have value or should be treated differently than citizens with respect to basic human rights.
There are a lot of instances in this document in which words are either used incorrectly or are without purpose in the context.
For example, section 2.6.1 "namely balancing budgets" perpetuates usage from the 2009 document, but the word "namely" has no actual role either here or in the list header.
(Note that the missing referent for "2.6.4 that they should" exemplifies a more traditional "committee product" kind of of sloppiness - the point here is unrelated to bad grammar, it's that "namely" has no role in the sentence.)
Dissimilarly, "exclusively" in
"3.3 Subject to minimum periods of membership which may be set out in this Constitution or otherwise by Executive Committee, every member is exclusively entitled to:"
misappreciates the use of "exclusively" in contracts; may be intended to mean "expressly" here; and is best dropped entirely.
Someone needs to edit this document to clean out these kinds of errors.
For example part 2.4.2.1 "the right to life, safety, liberty, and privacy" has some problems because it is:
In most of these cases the intent is obvious, but the wording doesn't express the intent.
Consider, for example, the two halves of:
2.8 We believe that the government, elected officials and civil servants are to serve the people; and that all citizens should be treated equally without prejudice from receiving the services offered by government."
Among the subtler things wrong with this (i.e. past the grammar and word choice issues) are the assumptions that: non citizens don't count; government exists independently of the elected officials; elected officials and hired hands are in the same category; government exists only to provide services; and, it's possible to combine equal treatment for all with prejudiced treatment for some.
My favorite example of this, however, is another hangover from the previous generation - section 3.2
To qualify for membership, an Albertan shall:3.2.1 have paid the prescribed membership fee, personally or through an immediate family member; and
3.2.2 either hold an official current membership card of the Party issued in his or her name, or be on the official party membership list.
Which says that only members qualify for membership -a constitutional limitation CA membership chairs must find rather frustrating.
Consider:
6.3 An Annual General Meeting shall be held at least every two years, at a time and place in Alberta to be fixed by the Executive Committee.6.4 General Meetings have the power and responsibility to:
6.4.1 amend this Constitution;
6.4.2 amend and adopt Party policy; and
6.4.3 elect the Executive Committee by secret ballot. (emphasis added)
6.5 The date, location(s), business to be transacted, and the rules and procedures for any General Meeting of the Party will be as determined by Executive Committee. One or more of the matters set out in Article 6.4 need not be conducted at a General Meeting if less than eighteen months have passed since such a matter was conducted at a General Meeting.
Vs.
7.3 The officers shall be elected by ballot at each Annual General Meeting of the Party to serve until their successors are elected,
Since it's probably unreasonable to have one part of the constitution contradict another, someone needs to think this stuff through.
(Note too the unheralded addition of the words "by secret ballot" to 6.4.3 - this is part of another set of changes being pushed through in this redraft that seems to me to be intended meant to make floor nominations and open elections more difficult to administer and thus easier to reject.)
This problem is subtle and every example is arguable. The basic issue is that this document should contain numerous normative position statements but those statements should not embed unsupported assumptions about the methods through which the implied policy goals can be met.
A particularly easy to understand (insert evil grin here) example of this occurs in 2.11:
2.11 We believe in being environmentally responsible through conservation and renewal of the environment for present and future generations
This sounds great, but the generational references are just paplum, we have no means of "renewing" the environment (and no definition of what it might mean either: anyone want to put the bitumen back into the tar sands?) - and conservation is usually counter-productive from both the national accounts and environmental stewardship perspectives.
For example, conserving electrical power by reducing use has the effect of extending the life of the existing generation and distribution facilities. Unfortunately these are, on average, significantly less efficient than the more modern engineering product that would be, or would have been, built in their place without the conservation effort - meaning that conservation often drives up the cost per unit, in both dollars and pollution, of delivered power.
The nearly worldwide switch to mercury laded "twisties" (itself both an environmental and an economic disaster) has, for example, increased worldwide CO2 production, relative to what was previously expected, by hundreds of millions of tons per year.
What's intended in these is usually a statement of belief - in this case that "We believe in being environmentally responsible" - the implementation parts embed arguable assumptions and belong in policy discussions, not the party's constitution.
Sometimes the VM disconnects seem almost intentionally ironic or self-mocking. Thus VM1, for example, rather ostentatiously informs us that "This amendment involves: .. introducing an easier to understand numbering style" - an improvement nicely illustrated in the succeeding section where the wrapper statements surrounding the numbered list are included in the numbered list:
2.1 The Party is founded on and will be guided in its policy formation by the following principles:.. 17 statements, or lists of statements, numbered 2 through 18
2.19 The Party and its representatives shall be guided by these principles and shall ensure that its policies conform to these principles
This kind of mistake seems careless and is easy to fix - but the point is that there are lots of these in the document, and they're embarrassing.
These issues may seem insignificant - but remember that we're being asked to approve a document filled with mistakes and contradictions because - well, let me quote VM1:
What we all do agree on is that this document is very superior to the current set of bylaws which are filled with contradictions, ambiguity, and are missing key sections which are required for the proper functioning of our Party.We ask that you pass this version of the Constitution so that we have a workable document for the next year.
Note that this sounds as if this is just about editing the document - but the changes will take effect the day this AGM ends, not after further editing and another vote next year.
When Mr. Marchiano's EDict2 (his dispute resolution draft) came out I responded the same day - and, absent any response from him, later took my problems with that document (PDF) to the executive.
Section 14 of the proposed new constitution embeds some material from EDict2 - but it's incomplete as a description of a workable dispute resolutions process and there's lots of blank space under what's there.
Since the PDF downloadable from the party website was made using PC software and such software is notable for its internal errors and inconsistencies it is possible that a few paragraphs from the underlying MS-Word document did not make it into the PDF.
I urge you, therefore, to verify that the document you're asked to vote on at the AGM is substantially the one available on the web in early June, especially with respect to the dispute resolution process - and, if so, ask yourself whether a process lacking definitions, scope limits, and both penalty and action considerations makes sense.