Man in a white sghirt and straw hat saluting to the camera. there are boats in a harbour behind him.

Max Thaysen: first two months with the North Island NDP Electoral District Association

There are 87 electoral district associations (EDAs) in BC, each one of which sends an MLA to the provincial Legislature. 

In July Max Thaysen was elected Vice President of the Executive Committee of the North Island NDP Electoral District Association.

Max Thaysen – submitted photo

“It’s been interesting and inspiring to get involved in this stuff, and I’ve been delighted to work on society’s great challenges with other people, and it’s been going really well,” he said.

CC: How do you meet?

MT: “Mostly on Zoom, which is quite interesting to notice how society shifted a little bit during the pandemic. Even people who live away from city centres can now participate in democracy a lot more. This  technology  is changing how democracy works. I think that a lot of our democratic processes are stuck in the 19th century, when they were built.  I would not have been involved  if my participation could not be facilitated by electronic commuting to meetings. It’s pretty cool.”

CC: How did you become involved?

MT: “I was initially inspired to join by a friend of mine  who had joined and was working within the party to achieve some of her goals that I also cared about. It just wasn’t really on my radar as a way that I could be of service to the world.  I’m pretty concerned about a bunch of things,  but I spend most of my time thinking and worrying about climate change, and I think that the NDP has the best mix of values to address the climate crisis. I wanted to get involved and help other people think about  these issues and make some good decisions for the benefit of all humans.”

CC: What is the EDA’s relationship with Michelle Babchuk, our MLA?

MT:  “She comes to most of our meetings, participates  in the conversations and discussions.”  

“I haven’t been on this team during an election, but my understanding is that  the executive committee, especially in the EDA In general,  is on Michelle’s team because we are participating  in the campaign, doing door knocking, doing fundraising, doing outreach, holding events, getting signs put out into the world, those sorts of things. We are like the foot soldiers in a campaign.” 

CC: What else does an EDA do?

MT: “The constitution of the BC NDP says that the party will be controlled by the membership.  I don’t know  what exactly that means, or how that all gets interpreted and I’m sure it’s variable depending on who’s involved and what they’re willing to do. In theory and on paper, all the members basically get to decide everything  that the party does.” 

The EDA is currently gearing up for the BC NDP Convention in Victoria, November 17th to 19th.  

MT: “The convention is actually every two years.” 

“There’s a couple of other members on the executive committee who are keen to do some research and host conversations, including talks by experts that we then discuss as members afterwards, to see how it can be useful to the world. There’s a lot of really serious things going on. I think just having more conversations  is often useful.” 

“I’m pretty focused on climate change and I wrote a few resolutions that address some pieces of the climate predicament.”

“One of the ones that I’ve been the most focused on is our carbon emissions reduction targets. We hear a lot of talk both at the federal level and the provincial level about reduction targets.  For BC it’s  40% below 2005 levels by 2030, and net zero by 2050, I believe is the current target. I struck out on a research project to try to figure out,  is that a good target? And if not, what is a good target?”

“That process has led me to the understanding that a reduction target is not a good way to think about it. What we have  is a budget problem. The science that the IPCC puts out is mostly around budgets. We can emit this much into the atmosphere, and it will result in this much warming. So, if you want to limit warming to a certain amount, then you can only emit this much in total.  Assuming we accept the science, the political discussion around how much of that budget is our fair share of the budget? And what level of warming are we willing to tolerate as being the safe upper limit? Or what levels of risk to safety are we willing to tolerate?” 

“The resolution that I’m most excited about is one that focuses on switching to the use of a carbon budget instead of an emissions reduction target, which is a trend around the world,  as well as strengthening that budget so that it’s in line with keeping warming below 1.5 degrees, which is what Canada and many other nations have agreed to under the Paris Agreement.”

CC: Is this proposal is being put forward to the provincial NDP? 

MT: “The process that we undertook was that we invited all the members of the party in our area to come together and have policy discussions and bring forward their own resolutions and get feedback on resolutions.  We had  a couple of those meetings where people brought forward things that they wanted.”

“The executive committee shortlisted those and made recommendations to the broader membership. Then we had a general meeting to finalize that decision about which resolutions we would propose to the convention. There’s a couple other steps between what our EDA has proposed and what gets to the convention floor.”

“There is going to be a prioritization survey, and there’s going to be a prioritization committee. Those are the two next steps that will rank the resolutions in terms of priority because there’s only a limited amount of time at convention for hearing resolutions. Only the top priority ones get discussed and then voted on.”

“The prioritization committee will also combine resolutions that are similar from around the province.  They’ll also take that into consideration when they’re prioritizing, how many,  very similar resolutions came in from different places and then there’s maybe other opportunities to negotiate a convention to have things bumped up in the prioritization.  I’m not sure how that’s all going to play out.  Then the survey goes out to all electoral district associations, and I think that there’s a pretty strong relationship between the results of that survey and how things get prioritized.”

“There’s some work to do between now and then, if we felt passionate about some resolutions that we could get people around the province to support our resolutions in that survey.” 

CC: So even if you don’t have your resolution accepted on the convention floor, it still gets to the other riding associations?

MT: “Yes, I think in a booklet of all resolutions submitted. So, in theory,  at least the executive committees from all of the EDAs will have a chance to see all of the resolutions and hopefully they’ll also put that out to all their members. 

CC: Aside from this annual convention what else does the EDA do?

Only two months after joining the EDA and in the midst of preparing for the convention in Victoria, Thaysen responded, “There’s a community kitchen in Campbell River. Some of the NDP members have been doing a monthly meal for people who are hungry. 

Top image credit: Max Thaysen – submitted photo

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