John Lennard for YLC President

Over the past few days, I've given a lot of thought to this whole notion of "party renewal."  It's hard NOT to think about it, given the results of Tuesday's election.  That, and every reporter, columnist and talking head in the country is discussing it.  As the cacophony of advice and insight grows louder and louder, I thought I'd do the honourable thing... and add to the chatter.

 So what does party renewal look like?  How about this:

• Young people doing the hard work nobody else wants to do. That was the story in Outremont, where Thomas Mulcair, the super-duper-Starship-Trooper candidate for the NDP in Quebec, was supposed to win in a cakewalk against his little-known Liberal opponent appointed two days AFTER the writ was dropped. My friend Martin - new to politics, but eager to help out in his home riding - talked me into volunteering. I'm glad I agreed.  People called the campaign "hopeless."  A mid-campaign newspaper poll had us behind by double digits.  Nonetheless, my friend and I worked hard.  In fact, we were the only two canvassers most nights.  Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to get a call from Martin on election night (I was back home in Sudbury for the final week).   His voice filled with excitement, he told me that our candidate was ahead in the early returns.  In the end, we came up just a bit short, but the experience left me with an emphatic belief that hard work, persistence, focus and a positive attitude are the values that win elections. To my friends and colleagues in the "hopeless" areas of Canada: Don't listen to the polls, pundits or papers. Just get 'er done!
• Young people being innovative.  For years, national campaigns have used Youtube and other online tools to get their messages across.  Local campaigns, however, seem ambivalent towards these tactics.  That all changed with Tyler Banham's "3pm" ad in Hamilton Mountain.  Inspired by Hillary Clinton's wonderfully infamous (or infamously wonderful?) "3am" ad, Banham's version is a cutting indictment of the NDP incumbent's poor work ethic.  It was widely successful among the college crowd, and also made it onto the local news (free publicity is always a plus!).   Watch it for yourself.  I bet we'll be seeing a lot more of this stuff in future campaigns.
• Young people taking on (very) senior roles on local campaigns.  I saw it first hand in Parkdale-High Park, Trinity-Spadina, Guelph, Hamilton Mountain, Westmount-Ville Marie, Laurier-Sainte-Marie, and (yes!) Nickel Belt.  It happened in other ridings as well, I'm sure. We may not have won all of them, but our impact was as positive as the new energy we brought to the table.  We made decisions - sometimes unorthodox ones - on strategy, organization, tactics, spending, communications and policy.  Better still, we learned, discovered, observed, figured out, tried, tested, succeeded, failed and grew from our experiences.  We'll take these lessons seriously, ponder them deeply and apply them favourably to the next campaigns we run.