The provincial New Democrat's relationship with the United Steelworkers in British Columbia took a bit of a nose dive during the 2005 de-affiliation debacle - which saw some party leaders try to reduce the influence of big labour at their conventions.

Really Sean? At the time those discussions had a certain appearance of controversy to them, but in the end the BC NDP adopted a full-on one member one vote system with few dissenting voices. Calling that experience a "debacle" is pretty much revisionist history.

B.C. is completely correct. Still there is a greater need now for the curent NDP caucus to work more aggressively to stimulate real debate on real issues amongst union members. I fear it is not happening....

Really Sean? At the time those discussions had a certain appearance of controversy to them, but in the end the BC NDP adopted a full-on one member one vote system with few dissenting voices. Calling that experience a "debacle" is pretty much revisionist history.

Really David P... Oh sorry, Budd... the experience was a full on debacle and Carole had to beat a hasty retreat from her original position of unions having no say in the party to a compromise position. But because of the way it happened, Labour has harboured bad feelings and has turned off the financial taps ever since. Too bad, too, because without Labour, all you have are a bunch of people with no money and even fewer organizational skills.

Carole had to beat a hasty retreat from her original position of unions having no say in the party to a compromise position.

That's the exact opposite of the truth, as everyone knows.

I don't have the dates or documents in front of me, but essentially the so-called "compromise" position that ws agreed too just before the Convention, and adopted by the Convention, was more radical than the original proposal. It involved a complete one-member, one-vote position, whereas the previous proposal still involved a certain amount of "split-level" membership.