You have all the power you need to win!

I’ve Heard Your Concerns

Over the last few months I’ve connected to many hundreds of delegates on the phone, zoom and email.

  • How do we keep our big tent together?
  • How do we get our message out through biased media & social media?
  • Where do we get more volunteers and donations?
  • But most of all how do we beat Trudeau?

The answer to the last question is that we have to do the first three.

Why Doesn’t the Party Do ……….

Another theme I often hear is why doesn’t the Party do X or why doesn’t the Leader do Y? The notion being that HQ has to do all of these actions if we are to win. But the reality is no matter what the Party or Leader does it will never satisfy all of the concerns from the Grassroots.

We Control Our Destiny at the Grassroots

Another way to look at the Conservative Party of Canada is that it is a giant volunteer management organization. The approximately 100 staff members manage 338 volunteer EDA Boards who in turn recruit and manage the 100s of volunteers needed to help win the election campaigns.

This means that most of the people power and money of the CPC is at the EDA or Grassroots level. We have all the power we need locally to run top notch campaigns.

Thought Experiment

What if something like COVID came along and sidelined our entire HQ staff? The Conservative Party was temporarily unable to help any of its Electoral District Associations. How would this impact the EDA’s?

Every EDA could still go and find a good candidate. Every EDA could still go out and raise the $120,000 needed to run a full campaign. Every EDA could still go and find several hundred volunteers to knock on doors and put up signs.

At the end of the day the success or failure of every campaign rests on us – the tens of thousands of hard core volunteers at the EDA level who make everything happen.

Team with Most Motivated Volunteers Wins

I once heard a speech by Jim Messina who worked for British PM David Cameron and Barack Obama. He talked about building a massive data machine on voter intentions. But in the end he said all the technology in the world doesn’t matter – THE TEAM WITH THE MOST MOTIVATED VOLUNTEERS ALMOST ALWAYS WINS!

Winning rests on all of us

I know how hard it is to build up a local board and campaign team. It’s hard but not impossible. Out of a population of over 100,000 that reside in each EDA we can surely find a few hundred that will help us win. We do this by being open, inclusive and accessible. We do this by not waiting for the Party or the Leader to do X or Y.

So lets make sure that we are the team with the most motivated volunteers!

They can only stop us if we let them.