Today, I proudly watched grassroots leaders from across Ontario vote to make the biggest changes in our Party’s history.
We want to make our Party as open and accessible as we can, because we believe everyone should be able to participate in politics and have their voices heard.
To make that belief a reality, we needed big, bold, structural change—and that is exactly what we did.
As of July 1, it will be free to be a member of the Ontario Liberal Party—making us the most open Party in Ontario.
But we did not stop there.
On July 1, we will be releasing the Nomination Rules of Procedure. We have made changes to our nominations rules to bring about more inclusion, and have an outstanding group of candidates who represent all of Ontario in the next election:
- Mandatory outreach to under-represented communities – Every single riding is now required to show that they’ve made specific outreach efforts to prospective candidates from communities that are under-represented before they can hold their nomination meeting—including but not limited to black, indigenous and people of color, LGBT2Q+, people with disabilities and marginalized communities.
- Reduced registration fees for youth and women – We have lowered the cost of registration for candidates under 30 years old by 75%, and for female candidates by 50%.
- Women-only nomination contests – We will make it easier to reach our goal of 50% female candidates by giving the Nominations Commissioner the power to, if necessary, designate a nomination contest open only to women.
These changes will make sure our party is the most open and inclusive in Ontario. I look forward to the release of the Nomination Rules of Procedure later this week, which will provide more details on the process for riding presidents, prospective candidates, and grassroots members across Ontario.
We also heard from our leader, Steven Del Duca, who shared with us who he has named the leadership team of the next Ontario Liberal Party Campaign. I’m excited to announce that in my role as Campaign Committee Chair, I’ll be working with Campaign Committee Vice-Chairs Kate Graham and Sumi Shan, Campaign Director Christine McMillan, Senior Advisor Don Guy, and Chief of Staff Najva Amin. Together, we look forward to taking the steps necessary to ready our party and grow our movement so that we are prepared for the next election.
As always, if you have questions, please feel free to get in touch.
Better every day,
Brian Johns
Chair, 2022 Campaign Committee
President, Ontario Liberal Party