GM 2014-05-21 minutes

The regular General Meeting of the Pirate Party of Canada came to order at 20:35 Eastern Time, May 21, 2014 at ca.pirateirc.net irc channel #canada. The President (CCitizen) was the chair.

BrentSchaffrick MOVED to accept the minutes as presented. SECONDED by psema4

RLim pointed out that the date needed correction. CCitizen amended the motion to read: "to accept minutes with date correction." CARRIED (For:8 Against:0 Abstain:0)

RLim presented Finacial Updates We need more funds. RLim mentioned starting up Zazzle merchandise again.

CCitizen stated that: "it's going to become part of our policy that we'll provide full info for the month before the GM (IE. April in this case of the May GM) as all that will be set in stone and give a brief update on stuff that has happened since the beginning of the month to the best of our abilities." He also mentioned that if we move our server hosting to SoYouStart.com, we can save a lot of money with essentially the same hardware.

RLim added: "The Financial Update includes upcoming spendings. So at the end of November we are expecting to have only about $1,000 plus left assuming we pay for one year of server hosting."

Wilson gave a Leader's report for the Political Council. Media situation. Additionally we have approached the other minor parties twice about joint actions (once over C-23 and once about joint action for proportional representation) As far as policy development goes we are still on track to have it affirmed by the membership by the end of the year. We have had slight delays (generally a week) for each voting round due to quorum. I'd like to address this at the end of the meeting. Regarding personnel: Shawn V. has announced he is leaving the PC due to taking a position that requires him be politically neutral. As such the GM will have to vote to accept his resignation.

During the report there was some discussion about how much Facebook sucks for getting your message out.

CCitizen MOVED to "Accept Shawn V.'s Resignation from the Political Council" SECONDED by BrentSchaffrick CARRIED (7 for, 0 against, 0 abstain)

CCitizen gave the President's report for the Executive Board: The Leadership of the Party as a whole has been very busy in the past month. That said there are a few things we need to discuss. The first is the continued vacancy of the IT Director. Last month we told people to contact the EB via email after the meeting if they were interested. So far we have only received one reply from René Kåbis. He meets the requirements of not being self-employed and having experience in the IT field. The other thing that I feel a need to report on in advance is that our 12-month server contract with OVH is coming up due in August. At the time the pricing was the best we could get. We paid I believe it was $1559 last year. We have found hosting that is within the same datacenter with a different spinoff company called SoYouStart.com and it bills itself as providing entry level servers. Details can be found at the setup we use is identical to the SYS-E32-3. Paying for 12 months in advance will cost $800 + miscellaneous fees (not expected to be more than $200) for additional IP addresses and such. However, we would need to migrate to the new server and would likely have to have an overlap of about 1 month as i would like to start our contract with SYS in July to ensure we have sufficient time to change everything over. Switching over means we will not qualify for the loyalty bonus from OVH but saving anywhere from $500-750 is well worth it. Also SYS offers the same loyalty pricing scheme OVH does so when we are done the next 12 months with them we will get an extra 3 months of hosting when we renew.

Wilson asked: "Is there any non-obvious way we can get screwed over by switching?" CCitizen responded: "Actually I'm not entirely sure but we might not have as many IP addresses available to us. i'm not sure if they'd give us an entire block of addresses like OVH did. Right now I think we have a block in such a fashion we have like 16 public IP addresses available for our use."

phillipsjk MOVED: Amend the constitution to strike "The positions of President, Vice-President and Secretary shall not be eligible to hold a position on the Political Council." from Article IV. This would have to go out as an all-party vote. Current constitution without (recent) quorum amendment RLim asked "would that take care of allowing EB officers on PC but prevent dual officer position?" phillipsjk answered: I believe so. "No Individual may hold more than one officer position." would still be in effect. SECONDED by psema4 CARRIED (8 for, 0 against, 0 abstain).

For new business, Wilson explained: "We currently have a prospective candidate for the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona. He has been interviewed by the leadership and no problems were found. Name: Anthony Mayfield. Currently not present" CCitizen MOVED to "Confirm Anthony Mayfield as candidate for the Edmonton-Strathcona riding." SECONDED by BrentSchaffrick CARRIED (7 for, 0 against, 1 abstain).

CCitizen MOVED to adjourn. CARRIED (5 ayes nobody against).

The meeting adjourned at 21:51 Eastern time.