Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Better Know a District: Brant and the Victory Fund

An Open Letter to Calgary Grit

So I'm very glad to see the Victory Fund fully operational and up and running. It's a great initiative with great promise and I hope all Liberals who have been reading about it take part. Sign up to donate at least $10 a month ($5 to a riding association and $5 to the party) (which works out to about $2.50 after taxes) and help Stephane Dion and ridings across the country promote the Liberal cause! Let's do our part to ensure the next quarter's results shuts the pundits and Conservatives traps about our fundraising once and for all!

However, I couldn't help noticing in Calgary Grit's post about this initiative that he is on the market so to speak in terms of which riding his money will go to. Well because I support my riding of Brant and my local MP Lloyd St. Amand so strongly I want to lay out why he
should be supporting us (no pressure though Dan :) ).

Though most of this letter applies just as well to anyone else who can't decide which riding to commit your monthly donation to (though perhaps I might strike a different tone with someone else). For all of those to which this applies, Brant appreciates your generous support.

Dear Calgary Grit:

I see you have offered up your money to a lucky riding somewhere in Canada. As someone always looking to grab spare change, I thought why not take a stab at convincing you why my riding wants (and dare I say deserves) your money most.

First of all, we have an excellent, dedicated, hardworking MP, Lloyd St. Amand. Lloyd is an amazing parliamentarian, and is especially friendly and supportive to our youth in Brant. He's not just intensely focused on keeping his own seat and seeing Stephane Dion become the
next PM, but he's also got his eye on building the riding up for the future. The same can be said of our riding association (BFLA) that, since the Brant Young Liberals were founded over a year ago, has been extremely supportive of our club in terms of providing resources so that we can always grow our membership and promote the party and our policies to other youth in the region.

With this kind of support, we have been effective in promoting the Liberal cause in Ontario which has helped us to gain the Ontario Young Liberals South Central region policy parliament May 24. However, as our members graduate from high school and go onto university, we need to do a recruitment drive to maintain our greatness. Lloyd St. Amand is supportive, and we hope that, as you are a Liberal known for your youth involvement, you might also indirectly support us through opening your wallet to our riding.

But that's not all! The BFLA also does a lot of outreach efforts to get more of the Brant community involved. We have open houses, golf tournaments, community dinners, and we have recently done quite a few policy forums with prominent Liberals from the area leading the
discussion.

Finally, Brant could use the money because it is being heavily targeted in the past few months by the Conservatives because in the last election, the Liberals won by just over 500 votes. We continuously get those silly and misleading crappy postcards from Tory MPs out of touch
with our riding. So any money we could would be helpful for a future campaign to further get our message out.

Brant has been Liberal for 15 years and hasn't been Blue since 1958 and it'd be a shame to see it go to the Conservatives next time all because Calgary Grit wouldn't fork over at least $5 a month to the riding (yes it could just make all the difference :) ).

So I hope you (and others) heed the call! Help ensure Brant stays red for decades to come! With your support victory is assured!

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3 comments:

Oxford County Liberals said...

I don't know Danielle: I think the riding of Oxford desperately needs a lot more help then Brant does: it has rarely gone red in its history. I think Grit would be better served donating there :)

BIDDING WAR!

Drew Adamick said...

I don't know, maybe Dan should consider donating some money to ridings out west :)

Dr. Tux said...

I concur,

Send your money west to the Saanich Gulf Islands (SGI) riding where stellar candidate, Briony Penn, is working hard to replace Gary Lunn.

She's got the green cred in spades and is also committed to social justice issues concerning indigenous peoples and, having been a professor for many years, is committed to investing in our youth and ensuring they have access to post-secondary education.

There is tremendous youth, women and community support for Briony but it's really important that we dig deep for this campaign. Running against a sitting minister is no small task.

Even still, SGI is ready for a change after many years of having Gary Lunn as our representative (through vote splitting of the progressive vote).