TERMS OF REFERENCE WORKING SESSION

Now that was a working session! Major credit goes to Chair Dr.Dan for shepherding us through the entire Terms of Reference in one session yesterday. I had thought at best that we would only be able to amend the highlights such as the ridiculous voting methods laid out encompassed by paragraph # 1, 8, 9 . Instead we went through the entire document paragraph by paragraph. Everybody got into the meat and potatoes both of changing obviously undemocratic sections plus of wordsmithing awkward areas. When finished I believe everyone was happy with a much more relevant and current document. Quite frankly the new TOR are barely recognizable with the old.

Debate was vigorous on a couple of subtle points but everyone kept their eye on the major objective. One reason for this much more comprehensive update is that most of the young CPAC plus SWAT have now got a couple of years of experience under their belts. Thus they better know and understand the pitfalls surrounding CPAC. These pitfalls consist of politics and more politics. Basically I'm not to subtly referring to provincial and municipal politics. Also yours truly raised an awkward memory from over a year ago and to their credit two CPAC members tried to dissuade me from bringing it up. On the other hand they also realized that a problem relevant to the discussion should not be censored. Therefore I hope that I was reasonably factual and non inflammatory when I pointed out how a sad episode from fifteen months ago needed to be addressed and indeed it was quite satisfactorily.

What I found incredibly positive despite differing opinions to the specifics was that each and every person present was working hard to make the Terms of Reference much more democratic and fair. Also to my surprise this morning I found a flurry of e-mails as various members already had rewritten their assigned areas for further examination. These Drafts are excellent and I forsee this project moving smoothly to final Draft and then on to Woolwich Council. With respect, as Council do not have two years plus experience directly sitting at CPAC meetings, these changes will probably require significant discussion and clarification. Once that is done I expect that they too will agree that these chnages were absolutely necessary and will enhance both the current CPAC and future CPAC's abilities to follow their mandate.