Action Plan item 3.2 Democratic Participation

I am pleased to see that the Democratic Deficit in Scouts Canada, first recognized by our former Commissioner, Mike Scott, is being address in a very significant way in the Action Plan Item # 3.2

In its publication, The Essential Characteristics of Scouting, the World Organization of the Scout Movement (1998, p. 25) states that,

“A voluntary movement depends upon participation of all its members, male and
female, young as well as older, at all levels, in the decision-making process. As
part-owners, or \stakeholders" in the Movement, they must be actively involved
in managing it’s affairs in a democratic manner.”

Policy 1014 has failed to produce an effective democratic structure. In my own Council there are 8 Area Teams plus the Council each having up to four votes. That would indicate that there should be 36 eligible voters from Council. In the most recent election it turned out that only 15 were registered. In all there were only 56 Voters registered and out of those only 46 actually voted. So far as I am aware there are over 100 groups in our Council. It would appear that not more than 14 registered. I feel that the participation rate is so low that the spirit of policy 1014 is not being met.

The candidates were not sent the gross results, they had no opportunity to scrutinize the results. The Council voted to destroy the ballots. How is it possible for anyone to discern the validity of the results when the candidates are kept completely in the dark about the nature of the results? In the two elections since policy 1013 was promulgated, in our Council the results were that the Council Commissioner, Council Youth Commissioner and one other member of the Commissioner's Team were elected as the Voting Representatives. I feel that there is a fundamental conflict of interest in this situation. A public servant who decides to run for public office and is elected has to resign. If a Senator wants to run for election to the House of Commons or any other public office, the Senator must resign. We should have a rule. Either persons holding appointments as Council or Area Commissioners or Deputy Commissioners should not be permitted to run for a position as Voting Member or they should have to resign their appointment if they are elected as a Voting Member.

I feel that it is imperative that we have a one member one vote system. This will have the salutary effect of involving many more of our youth members, especially since the age level proposed is 14. It will make those youth feel like stakeholders in the organization. Furthermore, it will eliminate the disenfranchisement of members whose Group Committee fails to get around to electing their three representative voters. It will also eliminate the situation where large groups are not given an equal voting weight and where small groups have a disproportionate voting weight. These reforms will help but the governance structure and particularly the role of the nominating committee must also be reviewed. As matters stand the Nominating Committee has effective control over the list of candidates. My experience informs me that the process for adding a person to the “management list” is cumbersome to say the least. As was demonstrated by what passed for an election of a youth member at the 2007 AGM, there is no effective way to challenge an irregularity that takes place in an election. Not one of the Voting Members spoke up about the irregularity. It is my view that the process of reforming the governance of Scouts Canada needs a broad based input with circulation of proposals and the opportunity to comment.

In response to the invitation from then Chief Commissioner Mike Scott after the 2004 AGM an initial proposal was made by SCOUT eh!
You can see it at-
http://scouteh.ca/resources/ScoutEh-pro ... 005-01.php
This was not meant to be the definitive solution, it was meant to open the dialogue on how to attain the objective espoused in the WOSM document

Scouter Ted Claxton.

While I am inclined to agree that Policy 1014 is flawed, I am not sure that the election results are inaccurate or not valid, at least for our council.

I worked as registrar for the council election committee for the first 2 elections. The first election we had similar results to your council, with the council commissioner and DCC youth becoming voting members. Having access to the raw information, I can say that they won because, in a council-wide election, they were the people most widely known. While many other candidates got good support from their Areas, only a few received support from Areas other than their own. People tend to vote for names they recognize. Personally, I believe council members are a good choice for voting member, since they are aware of the issues and have demonstrated an interest in the governance of Scouts Canada.

I would like to see Scouts Canada adopt a "one person, one vote" system for some very pragmatic reasons. The existing "electoral college" process is far too labour-intensive, confusing for the average member, and prone to "weakest link" syndrome relying on GCs, ACs, and CCs to forward lists of names and contact information. Every active member, with accurate contact info in MMS, ought to be able to vote. It puts responsibility for eligibility in the hands of Group Registrars who are in the best position to confirm membership. The side benefit is more accurate data in MMS. Since name recognition is a big part of who gets elected, something would have to be done in our Council to weight the vote in order to give candidates from less populous Areas a fair opportunity to be elected.

I vote for the 1 person 1 vote system. I don't agree with weighting votes. The CC/etc are not necessarily the best people as they have been appointed. Essentially, that is saying if you get appointed you will get the publicity to get elected. Something wrong there. However, some ideas even the playing field for the less well known candidates (would work for BOG positions too):

- Allow candidates to publish their platform, not just their biography
- Have some council communication resources put at the disposal of the candidates. e.g. website, newsletters, so candidates can get their message our.
- Have a forum, like this one, where questions can be posed at candidates.


Allan.

Hi everyone

As part of the Task Force's work, I am currently investigating ways to improve democracy within Scouts Canada. I appreciate the discussion so far, and if others have specific ideas on how to improve our processes, please post them here or e-mail me at skent@scouts.ca.

Thanks!


Steve

I vote for the 1 person 1 vote system. I don't agree with weighting votes. The CC/etc are not necessarily the best people as they have been appointed. Essentially, that is saying if you get appointed you will get the publicity to get elected. Something wrong there.

They are not just appointed Allan, as far as I now the Council proposes someone to the CEC for appointment, and he (usually just) approves it. So the first responsibility for choosing a Council Commissioner lies with the Council.

However, some ideas even the playing field for the less well known candidates (would work for BOG positions too):
- Allow candidates to publish their platform, not just their biography
- Have some council communication resources put at the disposal of the candidates. e.g. website, newsletters, so candidates can get their message our.
- Have a forum, like this one, where questions can be posed at candidates.
Allan.

Here I Agree fully with Allan. We just did this in another Association where I am a member. We opened a Forum: Candidates for General Assembly Positions (in our case the structure is different). And thened open a sub-topic for each serious candidate where he could post his Resume and ideas. Then every member was free to ask him questions; then base their votes on the answers. (Just one system )

One vote one person. This is the funny part, and not ha ha, there is voting? As an ordinary member, under Policy 1014, we don't vote, but not until recently, did we know there was voting. I have no clue who represents the group or how they got there. And asking this question is like a taboo or something. Is there somewhere a list of all voting members for all areas or however it is broken down?

Communication is the major challenge. Fortunately I belonged to a group where the Group Commissioner saw it as her responsibility to bring forward the information about voting and selecting voting members.

But if there's a blockage in communication at any level - National, Council, Area, Group - the voting process fails to work effectively. Somehow it must be communicated that the voting process is important and must be passed on appropriately and as per BP&P

Well, communication can be used as an excuse for a lot, and a lot of problems do arise from 'failure to communicate'. Scouts Canada has our mailing address, simple way to inform all. Word of mouth or sending the message verbally down the ranks is a standard practice that should be stopped for important issues. You never know where it stops, and why.

http://www.scouts.ca/dnn/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=CctvGxdffqM%3d&tabid=232&mid=599

See article 1014 under the

POLICIES OF SCOUTS CANADA

Almost everything you need to konow can be found on the Scouts Canada website if you click on

FOR SCOUTERS

Well, communication can be used as an excuse for a lot, and a lot of problems do arise from 'failure to communicate'. Scouts Canada has our mailing address, simple way to inform all. Word of mouth or sending the message verbally down the ranks is a standard practice that should be stopped for important issues. You never know where it stops, and why.

Having run the elections for the past 2 years in Voyageur Council, I can perhaps shed some light on this.

The election of voting members is a Council responsibility. Policy 1014 provides a guideline for how these elections can be run, but National does not participate in the execution of elections. So communication is the responsibility of your Council. In Voyageur Council, we got the message out via our mailing lists, MMS mailing lists managed at the Eastern Ontario office, websites, and word of mouth via the Area Commissioners, WB1 and WB2 participants, etc. In the end we still had leaders telling us they never heard about the elections, or were confused by the Voting Members versus Voting Representatives electoral college rigmarole that is laid out in Policy 1014.

MMS e-mail data is only as good as your group registrar and the office staff that is chasing your group registrar. Having had to rely on MMS to confirm eligibility, I can say that the quality varies widely throughout our council. It is definitely better this year than it was last year but there are still problems with the data.

The mailers that National and the Eastern Ontario office use are not configured to make themselves trustworthy to spam filters so many of their e-mails never reach the intended recipients. See my post about e-mail being useless for a longer rant on this. It may be that the office isn't even using the MMS data.

I have asked for a regular article or message box on governance in "Scouting Life" and formerly in the "The Leader" but so far I haven't seen anything appearing. If such a thing existed then the unwashed masses would be aware of what is going on and feel less out of the loop.

Thank you Karl. Your post kinda' sums it all up. I can see how and where things get confused, but I guess the reason why is still out there. Also, my question about a list of voting members in a previous post has not been answered.

I checked out Scouts Canada web site, and I can't find anything on this. Errol, can you be more specific?

http://www.scouts.ca/dnn/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=CctvGxdffqM%3d&tabid=232&mid=599


Click on the URL above and scroll down the document for all the election type details.

My other remark was directed at the Scouts Canada website where if you click on the second from the left

FOR SCOUTERS

you will be taken to the special website for us with almost all the information about many things that you want to have. Surf and see, if you miss anything, let me know; I am curious.

Is there somewhere a list of all voting members for all areas or however it is broken down?

There are 3 voting members per Council. Voyageur Council's voting members were posted on the council website but the links are gone now. They are Andrew Paterson (Volunteer), Neal Rice (Youth), and Francesca Viney (Youth). They were also announced in our Council newsletter. I hope other Councils did similar things but can't say for sure.

As for voting representatives (the people that vote for the voting members), there is a convoluted process defined in Policy 1014 which is either intended to obfuscate or an attempt at balanced representation. I am inclined to assume the latter is true since the former would not be in keeping with the Scout Law. Assuming your Council followed the default process, your GC ought to be able to tell you who represented your group in the election of Voting Members and how those representatives were selected. Policy 1014 encourages some sort of democratic process to be followed within Groups and Service Teams.

Depending on how these names bubbled up to your council's voting committee, your AC may be able to provide a breakdown for your area, and your CC ought to be able to get it from the Council voting committee, assuming records were kept. The rules say that every voting representative has to be a member in good standing, 15 years of age or older so I would hope somebody in your Council created a list in order to validate their eligibility. But like I have said in other posts, it is up to your Council to decide how to implement the details of Policy 1014 and if they followed a different process then there may be no records.

Perhaps you ought to volunteer to be on your Council's election committee next year.

So that's how it's suppose to work. I've never been able to get an explanation and don't recall plowing through BP&P to read that before.

In almost 10 years as a Scouter, I've never been asked and my group committee has never been asked to vote on anything other than who would be our group commissioner. Our council, Northern Ontario, has a new council commissioner this year and no one in our group or representing our group with our consent, voted for him or against him. Yet we sent the council and SC in excess of $10,000 last year alone, and fees in Sept. will jump by more than 10 per cent.

And that in a nutshell is why reform is needed.

I lean to one-Scouter one-vote, but coming from a region that is comparatively sparsely populated I have concerns that issues of importance to rural and less populated areas will be ignored or sacrificed by those that come from large urban or metropolitan areas with different issues or a different perspective.

A requirement for mandatory training, for example, may be desireable and possible in the GTA, but it isn't in a lot of other places.

Thank Karl, put me in charge

Still, my question goes unanswered. Should Scouts Canada not have an be able to produce a list of all voting members? Asking around has only got me blank stares, and a lot of 'voting for what??'.