[van-announce] UBC Students' Democracy Conference, Nov 2

[Colin Stark]

In light of Premier Campbell/Gordon Gibson's "Citizen Assembly" on Electoral Reform, this UBC Political Science Students' Association (PSSA) conference on Electoral Reform in its broad sense, promises to be a forum for interesting debate. It is on Saturday, November 2, 2002.

Among those invited are Gordon Gibson; Canadians for Direct Democracy, Fair Vote Canada, Coalition of Progressive Electors;  Adriane Carr of the Green Party, the BC NDP and the BC Liberals; several university professors; and more

See appended email below for details

Colin

Please forward to interested Groups and Individuals
*************
From: "Tara Shirley" <sunbaby31 at hotmail.com>
To: cstark at npsnet.com
Subject: PSSA Conference Update
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 01:11:19 -0600

Dear Mr. Stark,
I just wanted to update you on what is going on with the PSSA conference as it is only a month till showtime. YIKES!! So we'll start out with the basics. The conference will be held on Saturday, November 2, 2002. It will take place on campus in a lecture theatre yet to be determined. I am hoping for the Angus or Law building.

The structure of the conference is as follows: 

9:00 AM Welcome

9:15AM Session 1 (Professors: Arneil and Johnston)

10:45AM Break

11:00AM Session 2 (Professors: Blake, Eisenberg and hopefully Carty and Cutler)

12:30PM Lunch (provided)

1:30PM Session 3 (Citizen's groups: Fair Vote Canada, Coalition of Progressive Electors, Canadians for Direct Democracy, possibly more)

2:45PM Break

3:00PM Session 4 (Political parties: Adriane Carr, Green Party and hopefully the BC NDP and Gordon Gibson or a BC Liberal representative.) 

4:30PM Closing
This conference is an effort to explore electoral reform, which is currently quite a salient political issue, within a professional and academic context. Most Canadians take for granted that Canada is a democracy; what I want to do is suggest that maybe not all democratic electoral systems are the same. What are the trade-offs? Are all systems equally representative? What about political stability? These are just some of the questions that we hope to discuss. The basis of this event is not to debate what are the 'best' electoral reforms, but to provide a survey of the myriad of ideas that have been developed, all of which aim to improve the quality of democracy in this country. While for most sessions I have invited multiple speakers, the intention is not to hold any sort of debate, but to demonstrate that improved representation and electoral methods are issues of interest to groups across the political spectrum. 

As previously mentioned, I am arranging for space to be available for information booths. So if you would like to bring any materials for attendees you are more than welcome to do so. In this case, you or someone else may want to arrive a bit early to set up, as it is during the breaks that I expect people will be interested in checking out these booths.

Sincerely,

Tara Shirley
 
UBC Political Science Students' Association
Vice-President, Conference

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