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Green Party Of Canada Living PlatformThe Green Party of Canada Living Platform is a wiki used to employ participatory democracy in the writing of this political party's electoral platform. Significance It was notable for being the very first attempt to create a binding political platform entirely on the Internet. The party's Shadow Cabinet expects to have the first such platform ready in case of a Canadian federal election, 2005 - despite a shift away from the official party venues. There is currently a conflict between Green Party leader Jim Harris and other leading members over whether the party should use the "Living Platform" in the next election or one written in the traditional method as supported by Harris. Technology The basic technology of the platfrom is tikiwiki but mailing list, teleconference and chat media are also used. There is even some discussion about whether a blog element is useful. Use in outreach and lobbying Though the Green Party of Canada received only 4.3% of the popular vote in the Canadian federal election, 2004 and is not in the Canadian House of Commons due to Canada's "first past the post" voting system, it is an active lobbyist and has achieved some victories by working through members of other parties - see Canada Well-Being Measurement Act. This is an admirable step into the federal stage for the Canadian Greens. The Living Platform is open to non-members of the party as well as to non-citizens and even non-residents of Canada as anonymous individuals may add comments. However, only those who are members or advisors of the party can edit the actual wiki pages, the comments can contain links to the internal wiki pages or other resources, letting anyone aid in policy research. In a February 2005 meeting, the "emergence of a new and improved Shadow Cabinet" was defined as one of the LP's most important goals. An attempt to literally hand over the constitutional authority to author the platform to the LP users did not pass, however: see more on this conflict below. Feedback-oriented Terms of Use The Terms of Use combine the Creative Commons CC-by and CC-by-nc-sa open content Creative Commons Licenses in a way that encourages maximum sharing of policy papers and feedback, potentially among many players in the noncommercial sector. Contributions by any individual may be copied anywhere as long as attribution is preserved, but commercial use of any combination of works by multiple parties is reserved to the Party. However, any noncommercial purpose - such as other parties' debates or NGO position discussions or academic research - may freely redistribute all the content. Legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons and Common Content, and a notable critic of monopolies on information, has pronounced the terms of use as "cool". CC's own wiki debates on terms of use have similarly focused on this distinction between what a participant commits to the group and what the group commits to the public, the latter being Share Alike to ensure that the group creates a shared resource that is continously available to its non-members, even if some rights in that use are reserved to the group. Opposition by Harris In early 2005, the party's Election Readiness and Campaign Team (ERCT) (the de facto but unratified executive committee) asserted total control over all policy debate and shut down the Living Platform. One day before the shutdown, in early February, an attempt by that Council to assert the power to fire usurpers and protect "whistleblowers" - such as Head of Platform and Research Michael Pilling - was ruled "out of order". On January 20, 2005, there was an attempt by the ERCT to assert control over the Living Platform and delete all pages that suggested any policy or governing direction different than that advocated by ERCT itself. By that time, the Living Platform was being used by some members to debate political party governance. This was part of the mandate of the democracy and governance committee and also relevant to the GPC's own policy of behaving according to the policies that it advocates for government. Some argued that this use went beyond the original purpose of the wiki, but many including party leaders and Issue Advocates argued that it was inevitable and necessary. The governance uses included the use of the platform by deputy leader Tom Manley to debate party governance, its use by GPC Council member Sharolyn Vettese to debate a Code of Conduct for that Council, its use by the party's office manager to detail staff priorities to the members, by a women's caucus to build their agenda, and its use by members using it to discuss and develop alternative directions for the party (some of which were critical of the existing leadership). A very few pages contained possibly-derogatory comments about party figures which were soon removed by the administrators (as per the sites "terms of use"). Some documents which the ERCT had wished to remain secret were posted. Furthermore many of the pages that were critical of the leader and ERCT were open to the public to view. They were however all wiki user pages and clearly not party publications. Users of the Living Platform considered this normal and unavoidable - part of its evolution to deal with the internal operations of the party so that it would be prepared to take over internal operations of the government, practicing the transparency it advocated. Opponents of consensus decision making Bill Hulet, spoke in favour of the closure of the Living Platform, arguing "it is clearly not in the interest of the Green Party of Canada to use its scarce resources to advertise inflammatory comments about its duly elected leadership." Others questioned the need for restrictions on freedom of speech in the Green Party's forums. In late January, party chair Bruce Abel blocked any executive interference in the Living Platfom, and ordered the webmaster to keep it running and intact with all comments remaining on the record. This was meant to prevent hearsay, rumour, and CC-by violations from occuring. The process (steering) committee of the Living Platform decided to make some sensitive pages inaccessible except by request, but most of the pages would remain available so as not to interrupt the mission-critical work of the Shadow Cabinet, and those working on the post-ERCT Governance Council and a new GPC Council Code of Conduct. All of this work was wholly dependent on the Living Platform. A new wiki or namespace was proposed to be be set up solely for internal party matters - this was to be called "Living Agenda." The Living Platform, as a form of deliberative democracy, is seen by some Greens as integral to modern party operations. There were alse criticisms of its systemic bias, but also proposals to correct that bias via a "mark up and mail back" and "rank a plank live" system - and of course, live meetings have their own biases, too. Neither the ERCT structure nor the Living Platform had been voted upon by the membership at a General Meeting. There were some attempts to compromise by promoters of the open approach: A proposal by Party Fundraising Chair Kate Holloway to integrate all political party governance in a similar framework, a variation of Living Platform called the Living Agenda, was adopted by the Party's process committee as a response to first crisis. This would be the Party's mechanism for dealing with governance questions as raised by membership, and bringing maximum expertise to bear on decisions presently monopolized by the "ERCT". The Shadow Cabinet, heavily opposed to the ERCT and increasingly to Harris, is now using a revived Living Agenda/Platform at another "unofficial" non-GPC location: http://livingplatform.ca/ Living Platform revival As open content with the right to fork, the "free Canadian Living Platform" has been revived out of Green Party of Canada web space. However, it has expanded its mandate significantly beyond GPC or even the worldwide Green Parties or politics in Canada, and has moved significantly in the direction of global simultaneous policy, urban autonomy and bioregional democracy.
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