The Liberal Roadmap to Renewal has been released and can be read here. There are several longer drafts floating around I’ve put on my weekend reading list, but at 80-100 pages, I may just wait for the movie version.

While the process feels a little too top-down for my liking, we’ve been talking about renewal for years so I’m glad something is being done and that members have concrete proposals before them to debate and vote on at January’s Biennial convention.

As for the proposals themselves, some are unnecessary, some are flowery, and some skate around the real issues. Why we need to affirm the policy process is beyond me – I’d much rather see it reformed and made meaningful.

At the same time, there is some real meat in this document. The most visible and flashiest change would be moving leadership and nomination races to the primary-style system I blogged about earlier this week. This, coupled with the end of protected nominations for incumbents and the end of leader’s ability to appoint candidates would be a significant leap towards creating a more open and grassroots party.

I won’t go into detail on some of the bookkeeping changes being discussed, because if I do you’ll never visit this blog again. It’s not exciting stuff, but I will say that the move towards streamlining and centralizing accounting, fundraising, and operations will save money. And raise money too, come to think of it.

Fundraising to defend the new leader and buy more technology doesn’t require constitutional amendments, but those are worthy initiatives I’d be willing to open my chequebook for. The party needs to adopt a culture of data collection, so good on them for moving into the 21st Century.

The document is rather quiet on what must be done to engage existing members, but those kind of initiatives don’t require constitutional change – just a willingness by people in positions of power to make things happen.