Totally agree with what we need, and the illustration with the Conservatives long term on the ground 905 strategy. The questions you raise are near and dear for a number of us.
Whether or not it is the most important part, I want to zero in on this:
The NDP has historically only hired a full complement of ground organizers during electionc ampaigns. Jack understood that that would not be good enough and hired a core group of full-time organizers. After five years of investing in that capacity, it has all been let go. In truth, it has been under-funded and under-used since the change of managment in the party bureaucracy after the 2008 election, but it was still largely responsible for what growth took place outside Quebec in the 2011 election. We need it back, desperately...
You know more about the details than I do. And I hope some others may speak to those as well.
But you dont need to know the details to speak to the practical issues. And I'll give my existing sense of this.
When the hiring of the complement of full-time organizers happened- let one that now appears to be gone- I said then, "good start, but there better be more than this." [And a we'll see afterthought.]
Because the problem was not just one of sufficient long term commitment to funding. There was a fundamental inadequacy of structure- and apparently, of willingness to mess with that. Yes, Jack understood the needs, and insisted something be done about it. Without any funding of long term organizers the question of 'how' was moot. But it really is the central question.
The problem with the federal organizers- pre-election or long term- is that they are in practice just attachments to the provincial section. The stronger sections- where most of our growth is- even directly control them, essentially with just Ottawa consultation largely via the organizer.
Working through the sections with their own cultures, limitations and priorities, is no way to build the federal NDPs future.
In my books, the commitment to long term organizers was a better than nothing solution. And I suspect it was advanced that way.
There is the question of possibly formaly seperating the federal party. I wish that were on the table. But I also do not think that is required. It "just" requires the federal party saying "this is what we are going to do." That would be the spelling out of some course of indendently driven organizing. "Now let's work out how to coordinate what we do to maximize- but we are not going to give any of you veto power, let alone control, in the direction taken in the field.
So that is a different take on the problems than you saying that there was a change of administration, etc. But they are not at all mutually exclusive, and I would like to hear more.
A useful contrast/comparison: Jack's Quebec strategy.
When staff and key volunteer leadership people saw that Jack was serious about putting hard and limited cash behind this.... well, wait a minute now. And the resistance continued for a long time. As he is, Jaack was persuasive. But he also insisted- we are doing this. [Get used to it.] Years before May 2011 the skeptics knew this was paying off, and just getting started.
But what about the organizers in the field everywhere? Jack knew on how many dimensions this was necessary. And it wasnt meeting anywhere near the kind of resistance from the people around him as the Quebec strategy.
So whay not that same determination? I suspect there is no easy answer, and would not be even if Jack was still with us. A lot more money than the Quebec strategy? All the insitutional resistance, not least being the provincial sections? Sure, all of that? But that would not stop doing it in little bites. [Where making the existing organizational complement permanent would be just the initial step.]
