User:Mike-ZeleaCom/BC/p/ginger

The preliminary statement is as follows:

The Ginger Group has been formed to:

1. Address the democratic deficit within the provincial NDP;

The Ginger Group believes that the current leadership of the provincial NDP has lost its sense of direction and vision, along with the confidence of a large number of NDP members and supporters. It is imperative that the Provincial NDP immediately address the democratic deficit within the Party.

Further, the Group believes that too much power has been concentrated in the hands of the Table Officers. The ultimate decision making power must be returned to Provincial Council.

2. Refocus the Party on the environmental, social, and economic crises, particularly Climate Change, which confront the ordinary citizens of BC, and provide a sense of agency and belonging for the alienated membership of the party.

The Group believes that the leadership of the Party has insulated itself from the membership and appears to be incapable of, or unwilling to, address these crises. This alienation is destroying the Party.

3. Return the Party to its democratic Socialist roots.

The Ginger Group has therefore gathered together like-minded provincial NDP members and supporters to:

A) Restore to the membership the power to decide policy and to choose our organizational and political leadership.

B) Restore our Party as a vigorous advocate for, and an agent of, social justice.

C) Commit our Party to protection of the environment, including the initiation of real actions to deal with Climate Change

D) Commit our Party to offering a clear and unambiguous socialist economic model to replace the failed capitalist system which is destroying our environment, undermining basic human rights, and robbing our citizens of their share in the common wealth of our province.

The Ginger Group will accomplish the goals above through:

Resolutions at the bi-annual Provincial Convention to further these goals;

Electing Provincial leaders who advance the economic principles of socialism (ie. production for use and not for profit)

Electing leaders at the Constituency level who will work towards these goals.

Articles for change

We, the Ginger Group, believe the following changes are required to make the BC NDP a party of the people prepared to deal with the real issues of our times:

1. An effective Oversight Committee that is nominated from the convention floor and elected by convention delegates.
2. The right of all members in good standing to have access to all official minutes of all meetings except those portions held in-camera.
3. The establishment of platform items that honour the call by Sustainable BC policy that all future policy be created through the lens of environmental sustainability and that will initiate real action against Climate Change.
4. The decision-making power of the Table Officers shall be restricted to day to day administration of the party and not extend to the development of party policy or direction.
5. Positions on the Provincial Executive shall be limited to terms of six consecutive years, after which they shall not hold any position on the Executive for four years after their term expires.
6. No members of the Provincial Executive or the Table Officers shall be allowed to sit in more than one position consecutively.
7. There will be an automatic leadership review at every convention except when the Party is in power.
8. Platform and policy committees other than Standing Committees shall be elected by the Provincial Council rather than being appointed by the Table Officers. Those elections shall be based on a review of resumes on each area of interest that are submitted by interested members from across the province. Further all committees arising out of the business of the Provincial Council shall exist on an ad hoc basis only, tasked with an assignment by the Council, and upon conclusion of that assignment, each committee shall be dissolved.
9. Standing Committees will report directly to Provincial Council and such reports shall be given priority at Council.
10. All resolutions shall be circulated to each constituency by email, and only those that receive 30 per cent support be brought forward to Council or Convention.
11. Any resolutions not dealt with at convention shall be distributed to all Constituency Associations for presentation to their members in good standing, and those members shall vote on a recommendation to Provincial Council for disposal of the resolution.

Party policy

A

The NDP membership (alone) should control the entire resolutions process in the future, rather than relying on the executive to decide the priority and order of debate at annual conventions.

B

Every member should have the right to contribute towards and vote on every resolution on a quarterly basis, via email or mail outs, with an elected committee meeting (regularly) to collate and redistribute all resolutions to each constituency office. (*further details to be worked out later)

C

The leadership of the party shall be bound to uphold every resolution as a matter of policy, once decided. (*with some possible discretionary powers allowed, to be decided by the majority of members in coming conventions)

Economic policy

No taxation without account

We believe that it is wrong for a government to resort to tricks and subterfuge in order to hide the true burden of taxation from British Columbians. Not only ought British Columbians to be fully aware of the economic costs of direct and indirect taxes, but also of the social burdens and moral deficits of a revenue system that relies on profits of gambling, lotteries, sales of liquor and other popular commodities, where the costs fall disproportionately on the poorer and weaker members of society.

We shall therefore legislate that no British Columbian be required to bear the financial cost, whether direct or indirect, of any tax, fee or tariff, without knowledge of the exact amount at the time of imposition, and without a personalized account of all such impositions being made available on request, at any later date. Further, such a personalized account shall be forwarded (whether requested or not) to every tax paying resident at intervals of not less than one year.

This provision applies to every imposed tax, fee and tariff that enters the expendable revenue stream of the government, excepting only that which is set aside for reimbursement, dollar for dollar, and with interest at market rates, within one year of imposition.

A

The BC NDP should raise income taxes, on the highest income brackets, as well as taxation on property and capital gains, to raise adequate revenues in the future.

B

Raising corporate taxation, reinstating inheritance taxes on property above X amount, and eliminating (unproductive and unnecessary) tax shelters and loop-holes should also be NDP priorities.

Limits to income disparity

We believe that a wide disparity of personal incomes is wrong. When one individual's income is too low, and another's is too high, the difference is socially divisive and harmful to the province as a whole. We also recognize, however, that it is difficult to enforce absolute limits to income without doing equal or worse harm. We shall therefore proceed on two tracks: the first being a matter of setting clear ethical guidelines; and the second a matter of effective administrative policy in support of these guidelines.

On the first track, British Columbians shall endeavour to set ethical guidelines on income disparity. Both the general limits (low and high), as well as any specific justifiable exceptions, shall be decided by the public at large through a continual process of best possible consensus (BPC). The initial limits shall be set at not less than 30% of the median income, and not greater than 500%, with no exceptions. Thereafter the limits and exceptions shall be continually revised by BPC, at not less than weekly intervals.

On the second track, we shall endeavour to build consensus on the administrative policies by which these ethical guidelines may eventually be applied. This is a longer term goal.

Environmental policy

Local consensus for projects of environmental impact

We believe that the people who are most affected by environmental impacts should be the ones making the development decisions. We therefore endeavour to identify particular categories of production and resource extraction that have local impacts, and the predominantly affected distribution of each. We shall then pass legislation to ensure that these categories of development are subject to local consensus within their affected distributions. For any particular development project that falls within these categories, its license to commence operations, and the terms operation, shall be determined by prior stable consensus (PSC) of the locally affected residents. The general method of PSC shall be determined in advance and applied province wide. The particular terms of each PSC licence, however, shall be locally determined. Until local consensus is achieved, no development shall proceed.

Notes and references

Modified from GingerGoodone's posts to Rabble Babble: http://rabble.ca/babble/western-provinces/preliminary-statement-bc-gingers.