2020- 2022 Policy Process | Green Party of Canada
Where GPC membership collaborates to develop our policies
G21-C005 Hold General Meetings Annually with a Guaranteed Virtual Attendance Option
Submitter Name
Sarah Gabrielle Baron and Constantine Kritsonis
Ratification Vote results: Adopted
Proposal
Change Article 8 to read:
A General Meeting shall be virtual or a hybrid of in-person and virtual. All General Meetings will allow for online attendance, online participation and online voting.
Replace Article 8.2 with the following:
A quorum shall be two hundred (200) Members present at a General Meeting who are in good standing, representing at least two regions, as defined in the Bylaws.
Change Article 8.3 to read:
General Meetings shall be held at least once per calendar year. General Meetings shall occur within three-hundred and sixty-five (365) days of the previous General Meeting.
Change Bylaw 4.1 to read:
Calling of General Meetings:
Change Bylaw 4.1.1 to read:
The General Meeting of Members may be called by the Federal Council by majority vote. Federal Council may establish the location and the date of the meeting.
Change Bylaw 4.2.1 to read:
General Meetings may also be called by:
Change Bylaw 4.2.1.2 to read:
Federal Council by a majority vote of Council members voting.
Replace Bylaw 4.4.1 with the following:
Votes cast by internet means shall be counted in real time. Votes shall be conducted by a process where the authenticity of the vote can be verified.
Objective
To enable a virtual attendance option at General Meetings. This enables participation by Members who would otherwise not be able to attend. To increase the frequency of General Meetings to a minimum of one per year.
Benefits
Strengthens participatory democracy within the GPC by enabling more Members to participate in Party decisions. As Greens, we strive to make participation affordable, accessible, and carbon neutral.
Supporting Comments from Submitter
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to place limits on in person gatherings, virtual general meetings in large organizations are becoming more common. For example, several Canadian credit unions and banks have geared up for holding virtual Annual General Meetings.
The Green Party of Canada has previously held an online special General Meeting successfully (OSGM 2016).
The tradition of holding biennial general meetings or conventions is shared by most Canadian political parties. The driver for this limited frequency has to do with the logistics and cost of holding these conventions, which historically have been held in person. However, other national Green parties (for example, the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand) conduct virtual Annual General Meetings.
As Greens, we strive to make participation affordable, accessible and carbon neutral.
Green Value(s)
Participatory Democracy
Relation to Existing Policy
This proposal would rescind, replace, and/or amend sections of Article 8 and Bylaw 4.
Amendments (2)
Currently, there's another amendment being evaluated for this proposal. In order to create a new one, you must wait until the current one is accepted or rejected.
You can also reach the author of this proposal by leaving a comment and try to speed up the resolution of the current amendment.
You can access the current amendment here.
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Sorry for the double post.
I think in the longer term, we are looking at a continuous resolution process (CRP). A resolution could be put forward at any time and be moved stepwise through an online process to adoption. Once you lose the requirement of physical attendance, there is really no reason why 50-100 motions should all decided within a two or three day period.
There would of course be some resolutions that have to be decided at regular intervals (a budget for example, elections etc). But otherwise resolutions should be considered more or less as they are proposed.
The only reason why I oppose this motion is because creating an 'online attendance platform' that integrates with in-person meetings would be very expensive. A CRP would also be expensive.
So if we are ultimately headed towards a CRP, it makes little sense to build the hybrid platform as in interim solution.* This motion would commit the GPC to a high cost solution that could very quickly become redundant. Because there really is no need to squish our decision making into a rushed yearly process.
If we want to benefit from moving online, then let's move online. All of it.
*(To the extent that some of the functionality of a hybrid platform could be reused as a CRP platform, it might be possible to minimize waste by creating a multi-phase plan. If this is the intention, then perhaps this motion could be amended to replace 'online attendance, online participation and online voting' with specific functions that could be eventually recycled into a CRP. For example, asynchronous 'online voting' could be developed first. Online participation that syncs with a physical meeting however would be very difficult and expensive to implement.)
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