Your ideas to modernize as one party

March 5, 2016

In the months and years before October 19, 2015, Liberals came together to build the most sophisticated, modern, and data-driven campaign that our party has ever run.

We achieved a remarkable victory together, but the biggest mistake we could make is to take any of it for granted as we look toward the next election in 2019. Canadians are counting on us to keep building, modernizing, and opening up the Liberal movement. We must continue to rise to that challenge.

Too often our success was impeded or held back by the vastly divided and complicated nature of our party’s 81-page national constitution, and the more than 18 constitutions that affect the national operations of our party. All other major federal parties have just one constitution.

Now, at the Winnipeg biennial convention from May 26-28, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernize the structure of the Liberal Party of Canada and strengthen our movement as one party.

That’s why I’m asking for your input and ideas to reform this foundational document and our party for the 21st century – and to continue our work together to build a Liberal movement that is more open, unified, innovative, and engaging.

I said when I became leader that the era of the hyphenated-Liberal is over. Yet the scars and legacies of those old divisions are nowhere more pronounced than in the 81 pages of our party constitution.

Major constitutional obstacles often required significant time and resources as we built the 2015 campaign, but that might not be possible a second time in 2019.

So I’ve asked LPC President Anna Gainey and your LPC constitutional advisers to lead a working group charged with starting from scratch, to redesign this party from the ground up for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Nothing is off the table, and they need to hear directly from you.

What are your ideas to bring real change to the Liberal Party of Canada? How can we rethink membership? Make conventions more open to Canadians? Modernize and open up policy development? Support local Liberal ridings as engines of engagement and organizing?

Together I know we can build a Liberal movement that is stronger and more open than ever before, but I need your support and ideas to make it happen.

Share your ideas 

Thank you and see you soon,

Justin Trudeau
Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada