Stefan Klietsch
Stefan Klietsch grew up in the Ottawa Valley outside the town of Renfrew. He later studied Political Science at the University of Ottawa, with a Minor in Religious Studies. He ran as a candidate for Member of Parliament for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke three times from 2015 to 2021. He recently graduated with a Master of Arts in Political Science at the University of Carleton.
Contributor's
Unpublished Opinions
Farewell to the Prime Ministerial tenure of Justin Trudeau. He leaves the office with the...
After months of hype, United States President Donald Trump’s threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian...
The failure of Ontario opposition parties to compete with the Progressive Conservatives At the...
Any serious and competitive political party features internal policy debates and votes that allow...
It is easy to forget just how much turnover there was in the House of Commons following the 2015...
With the ongoing and persistent slump of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in the polls, some...
Comments by Stefan Klietsch
Hi Blake, I need to clarify for the record that some of your comments are unfortunately misleading. I actually said very little about Kathryn McGarry or Bonnie Crombie in any public forum prior to this blog post, let alone engaged in "ad-hominem" attacks. If you feel confident that there are any such examples of such public comments, please feel free to share them. During plenary I only made criticisms of the process itself or of expected critics.
You have lectured me on not rushing to judgment, but respectfully you have rushed to judgment by not asking me any questions to elaborate my accusations here. My accusations come from experience trying to work with all the persons in question, not from any rush to judgment. I have been an OLP member since 2019 but it took me until 2023 to deduce the motivations of the OLP authorities. And I certainly have not shown prior negativity towards Bonnie Crombie in particular. While I voted Nate for Leader, you can see one of my earlier blogs on this very site where during the leadership contest I made the mistake of singling out Yasir Naqvi for suspicion on the policy debate file. But I was very correct in many of my other predictions, from successfully anticipating that Eric Davis would speak against 1 of my amendments to anticipating that Council would not answer my public question about the resolutions obstinance of prior Councils. I would not have gotten as many predictions as correct as I did from hasty rushes to judgment.
You write, "I actually agree that their models of participatory democracy are fantastic, but expecting that same model to be adopted wholesale by the OLP, which operates under a different organizational structure and philosophy, is not necessarily realistic or pragmatic. Change has to be incremental and adapted to the existing framework." I have never suggested that the OLP should wholesale copy the way that Green Parties arrange policy debates - in some ways the OLP plenary processes became *too similar* to that of the Green Parties, to my consternation. But I need to respectfully remind you that the core demand here is very simple: **every other major political party you can think of** has at least some kind of policy resolutions debate and vote, and the OLP does not. Sometimes you can only be so polite about such exceptional stupidity!