After finally landing in Montreal last night and arriving at the place for the evening event at around 01.00 last night, it was a pure delight seeing my bed later that night and getting some hours of sleep. :)  Unfortunatly my delayed flights and missed connections, meant that I just missed meeting YDA President Chris Galloway, that had to leave early this morning for a meeting back in the states, but our paths are soon to cross again. However, I did manage to meet former IFLRY VP Brigitte Legault and many other familiar faces from our IFLRY family. :)

Its now friday afternoon here at the convention of the liberal party of Canada. The first round of voting for new leader of the party is just about to start. There are 8 candidates for the position and the atmosphere is intense.

In a style relatively similar to what you can see at bigger sporting events, the different campaigns are organising rallies, waiving their signs, singing their candidates name and competing with the other campaigns about who can make the biggest impact.

After the first round of voting, there will be an intense study of the numbers cast for each candidate and the strategy about who to lobby for picking up votes in the second, third and forth round of voting. Later tonight there will be nominating speeches for the different candidates and some evening parties (where I suspect that a great deal of lobbying and making deals will be on the agenda in the different campaigns). Second voting is tomorrow morning, so it will most likely be an early night for most people.

The YLC is in massive numbers here at the convention, which is also where they have the YLC biennial meeting. There is about 1/3 of the delegates here that are part of YLC (as far as I heared its about 2000 out of 6000 delegates) - a massive number and it really shows the impact we can have as youth in our mother parties. The YLC influence is also clear when seeing the debates going on about the constitutional amendment proposals and other issues on the agenda.

Now I will go back to follow the voting of the first round. Will be interesting to see who will be the next party leader and hopefully subsequently the next Canadian primeminister. 

 /Jacob