Marathon of regional conferences yielded new ideas

The purpose of regional conferences is to allow PLQ members to defend ideas that will eventually be taken up at the general convention and that will eventually contribute to the party’s electoral platform.

Some of these ideas may even find a place in the regional platforms of Liberal party candidates.

Having witnessed the last two rounds of regional conferences, I expressed that I was not satisfied with how things were working. My principal criticism focused on the need for greater participation among our supporters, whether in terms of editorial choices or in the organization of the conferences.

I therefore wrote up a conceptual proposal for the organization of the conferences. After submitting it to the party authorities, I let it sit for a bit, and three weeks later, the chief organizer, Benoit Savard, asked me to chair the organizing committee. I found that this delegation of authority was a bit quick, and, in fact, my goal was not to organize everything.

I ended up asking for a couple of days to reflect upon the offer. In a meeting with party leader Jean Charest, I asked him if he himself was prepared to get involved in the tour and not miss any of the regional conferences, to which he replied that he would.

After a promise by Benoit Savard to provide both technical and administrative assistance from the Party’s headquarters, I accepted the challenge to organize the tour.

Since the beginning of May we worked to prepare and hold 16 regional conferences. Each event saw a total of six or seven preparatory regional meetings. I personally attended one or two of these meetings in almost every region of the province. The conferences began the weekend of Sept. 9 and 10, and continued until the weekend of Nov. 18 and 19. No conferences were scheduled on only two weekends, the first being at the end of September, when Jean Charest was attending the meeting of the Francophonie leaders’ summit in Bucharest and second being the Thanksgiving Day weekend.

In the 16 regional conferences, we organized 99 discussion workshops on subjects that, in each case, were chosen by local supporters who, through their regional political commissions, wrote up the documents that launched the discussions.

Moreover, these supporters found more than 180 local resource people, specialists in the subjects chosen for discussion, who joined together with the ministers responsible for these issues. More than 6,000 supporters took part in these meetings; the Premier himself took part without missing one. Quite a feat spread across 11 Saturdays and Sundays!

It goes without saying that the quality time spent with the Liberal supporters was at the expense of family time. Quite subtly, and quite rightly, Antoine Charest helped me understand this. And since I myself was present at all of these regional conferences, it goes without saying that my wife shared in this same sentiment.

All the same, this was the biggest political operation seen in Quebec in recent memory. A very worthwhile experience, even if everyone is happy that the marathon is now over.



• Jacques Chagnon is the Liberal MNA for Westmount—St. Louis.