{"id":11,"date":"2007-07-24T10:50:33","date_gmt":"2007-07-24T17:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/2007\/07\/24\/the-corporatisation-of-the-green-party-of-bc\/"},"modified":"2007-07-24T10:50:33","modified_gmt":"2007-07-24T17:50:33","slug":"the-corporatisation-of-the-green-party-of-bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/2007\/07\/the-corporatisation-of-the-green-party-of-bc\/","title":{"rendered":"The Corporatisation of the Green Party of BC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Corporate thinking has infected the BC Green Party council<\/p>\n

Over the past year, the BC Green party\u2019s provincial council has stealthily been gathering power to itself while covertly restructuring the party into a conventional, \u2018top-down,\u2019 authoritarian, and decidedly anti-grassroots fundraising and vote-grubbing machine.<\/p>\n

Since dumping leader Adriane Carr<\/a> last year, the BC Green Party\u2019s primary decision-making body has cut itself away from the party\u2019s grassroots membership, hidden its decision-making processes, and not once disclosed the party\u2019s financial status or fundraising progress.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a disease called corporatism, and it functions through elitism, control of decision-making, and restriction of information.<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s governing council seems to have wholeheartedly adopted the corporate mindset. This includes a hierarchical power structure that disempowers the membership, plus a belief that those elected to council are smarter than the others and therefore deserving of absolute power.<\/p>\n

Regional associations excluded<\/p>\n

Without consulting the membership, council members appointed as interim leader and awarded a hefty part-time salary to a corporate political consultant who lists former Liberal cabinet minister and leading continentalist John Manley among his clients.<\/p>\n

But possibly the most destructive aspect of this attack on grassroots BC Green democracy has been the exclusion of almost all of the party\u2019s regional groups of constituency associations \u2014 the grass roots of the BC Green Party \u2014 from representation on their own provincial council.<\/p>\n

This un-Green act of centralisation was achieved by devising a Byzantine set of rules that effectively made it impossible for regional associations to elect a representative to carry their voice and views to council, despite this right being guaranteed in the party\u2019s own by-laws.<\/p>\n

Strangely for a peace-loving Green Party, these disenfranchising rules were devised by a committee headed by a Green Party councillor who is the owner of an Ottawa-based company that makes video guidance systems for missiles and artillery, and video security software.<\/p>\n

How can a weapons manufacturer be allowed to become a member of the provincial council of the Green Party of British Columbia?<\/p>\n

Only in Canada, you say? Pity\u2026.<\/p>\n

Centralisation of power<\/p>\n

Other aspects of the centralisation of power into the provincial council include:<\/p>\n