Ontario Health Coalition - Election Planning Kit #1 - All Candidates' Meeting Planning -- DAWN Ontario: DisAbled Women's Network Ontario


Ontario Health Coalition Election Planning Kit #1 All Candidates' Meeting Planning
	\ Contents: First Steps: booking a venue, contacting the candidates Model Agenda Tips for Moderating the meeting Model Media Advisory & getting the media Questions for Candidates (this sheet is meant to be photocopied & available for attendees of the meeting) Answer the Question (this sheet is meant to be photocopied & distributed to attendees of the meeting) Getting people to come to the meeting Model Flier First Steps Contact groups in your community to co-sponsor the event. Talk to like-minded organizations and affiliates and see if they will co-sponsor the event. Some groups you might ask include: seniors' organizations, community agencies that deal with healthcare issues such as your local community health center, member organizations of your coalition. The more sponsors of the event, the more people working on getting folks out! Also, the more difficult it is for candidates to say no. The goal for the meeting is to make the key healthcare issues important in the campaign, and to get this out in the media. Contact the candidates. You can get their phone numbers by calling 411 and asking for the candidates' name or their campaign office. You can also log onto their political party website and contact the local riding association. Riding association contacts should be listed in your phonebook. Or take a drive over to the campaign office. When you contact the candidates, ask to talk to the campaign manager. They will be able to schedule the candidate or put you in touch with someone who is doing the schedule. Have the request ready and send it in writing by fax as soon as you have called. Give them a timeline to respond (a day or two is sufficient). Call with one - three dates in mind and have the time of day set - most usual is 7 -9 pm on a weeknight or on a Saturday afternoon. If you are focusing on seniors as attendees, you could plan a weekday afternoon. It is easier to coordinate between all of the political parties this way. Ask all the candidates for their availability on the first date of your choice first, failing that, ask them all about the second etc. This may be the toughest part of getting the meeting together! You will have to be very persistent and make it hard for them to say no. They may have questions about the format of the event. See next page for a model agenda. Talk this over and set the agenda with your co-sponsors. Don't spend too much valuable time on this, a quick phonecall/meeting to plan the agenda should suffice. If a candidate says no. If a candidate will not return calls within a few days, or if they refuse to make themselves available for any of the dates, you can use this to make hay in your local media. For help with a media release, feel free to call us at the OHC. Get a venue. You can try the local library, a legion hall, a seniors' center, City Hall, a school, a union hall, or other public location. Note: the location must be wheelchair accessible, central and easy for the public and media to get to, accessible by both car and public transit, ideally a well-known location. Venues can vary greatly in price so if you find one that is over $100 try again, you should be able to find something cheaper. It is a good idea to pass the hat at the meeting to get donations to help cover the cost of the venue. You should plan to have some tables for literature and coalition memberships. We have lots of fact sheets and other info you can use if you don't already have it. Call the OHC office, leave us an address where a package can be received during the daytime (don't forget the postal code) and give us at least three days notice to get it to you! Model Agenda There are several variations you could consider for All Candidates' Meetings. Some possibilities: a) Moderator - introduce event and candidates, review the ground-rules b) Candidates Speak - allow the candidates 3 minutes to speak about their position on healthcare at the beginning of the event. Cut them off at 4 minutes. (see tips for keeping to the agenda timeframes in next section). c) Questions from the Floor - Option 1: Allow audience to ask questions. Allow all candidates to answer all questions. Set a 1 minute maximum time for questioner (to prevent speeches) and cut off questioners at 1.5 minutes. (allow flexibility for those who are unable to speak quickly or who have emotional stories). Set a 2- 4 minute maximum for the answer. Cut off 30 seconds - 1 minute after the maximum. I prefer the 2 minute maximum, because it forces the candidates to actually answer the question and allows for more questions from the floor ( approx 10 questions). You need to decide this beforehand and stick to it. Remember that if you allow all candidates 4 minutes to answer each question, and if you have candidates from 4 political parties present, it will take at least 16 minutes to answer 1 question. In a two hour meeting, this will limit the number of questions to about 6. Option 2: Allow audience to ask questions directed at one or two candidates max. Follow the maximum asking time as in Option 1. Follow the maximum answer time as in Option 1. This option might allow for more questions, but you risk leaving several parties out of the answering completely, or many of the questioners may simply ask that all candidates answer their question. Option 3: Plan several questions to have the moderator/coalition members ask all candidates to answer and scatter them among the audience's questions throughout the evening. Note: this option risks annoying the audience, but it assures you that certain questions get asked. d) Closing Remarks from Candidates: Allow the candidates to make a short wrap up (1- 2 minutes max, cut off at 2- 3 mins. You need to decide this and stick to it!) e) Moderator- thank candidates, audience and organizers & adjourn meeting. Tips for Moderating an All Candidates' Meeting Who should moderate? A member of the coalition or a well-known community figure should moderate. The person needs to have some experience chairing meetings as All Candidates' Meetings can be a little tough to keep moving. The person should not be seen as having a well-known partisan history and needs to be fair to all parties. A sense of humour and compassion are great skills for a moderator to have. How to keep to the timelines? You need to appoint a timer who carries two bright colours of flags or the like (legal sized file folders work just fine). At the beginning of the night, the moderator should introduce the timekeeper and let the audience and candidates know that s/he will hold up one of the coloured folders to mark the end of their time (warning) and the other to mark the cut off time. The moderator needs to keep to these times as much as possible so as to be fair to everyone. Flexibility should be allowed for those who have difficulty speaking /speaking quickly - therefore extra time is a reasonable accommodation - or for those who have very emotional questions/comments. Stay calm & be firm. This is the best way to keep the meeting going. Try to avoid getting into arguments over timing. Gentle humour is a good way to cut people off nicely. Pre-plan some phrases that you can use to stop people who are getting too long-winded. Pick your battles! Getting the Media If your local newspaper is a biweekly or weekly, it will help to find out their story deadlines before setting the date. If their story deadline is a Wednesday, Tuesday night might be the perfect time to hold the meeting. There is nothing wrong with asking them what will work best to ensure the story gets into the paper. The same applies to TV media. If you hold your meeting at 5 pm, for example, chances are that all the TV reporters are filing their stories. Ask them what will work best. It shouldn't be too tough to get media to an All Candidates' Meeting. You need to issue a media advisory as soon as you can. Then re-issue it a day or two before the event. You should call the media the day before and day of the event. We have a media list for every town in Ontario in the OHC office. If you don't have a media list for your town, contact us to get it. Give us a day or so to get it to you and leave a fax # where we can send it as we do not have it in electronic form. *A model media advisory follows: XXX Health Coalition Address, Phone, Fax, Email, Website Date Attention: Assignment Editor Media Advisory What: All Candidates' Meeting on Healthcare Issues Where: (name of venue) When: (time & date of meeting) Who: (names of Candidates appearing) Sponsors: (names of sponsoring organizations) Media contact: (name & phone number) *Note: ensure your media contact is available to return calls promptly. * please make lots of copies & have them available at the meeting Ontario Health Coalition Questions for Candidates Provincial Election 2003 There are now five planned private for-profit (P3) hospitals in Ontario. Worldwide evidence shows that these private hospitals cost more and lead to bed, staffing and service cuts. They also transfer control over billions of dollars of public assets to private companies. What will you do to stop the private hospitals - including the one in Brampton if the deal is signed before the election? What will you do to ensure new hospitals and hospital redevelopments have adequate public funding? Tens of thousands of frail elderly seniors have had their home support services cut in the last several provincial budgets. Studies show that these services are important to prevent illness and injury - and actually reduce admissions to emergency rooms. What will you do to restore home support services to seniors, those with disabilities and those with chronic illnesses? Privatization of homecare has been a disaster. Companies are making money by cutting the benefits, mileage and remuneration of homecare workers. Staffing shortages, high turnover and reduced services are the result of introducing private for-profit companies into homecare. What will you do to restore public, non-profit homecare services in Ontario? The corporate lobbyists for nursing homes have succeeded in reducing resident and staff protections. Minimum staffing levels are gone. Government studies show that Ontarians in long term care facilities are among the most acutely ill in the country and yet have the lowest hours of care. Staff accidents and injuries are on the rise. Families have to pay private caregivers or provide care themselves, if they are able. What will you do to improve the shameful conditions in Ontario's long term care facilities? Last summer, the Provincial Conservatives increased fees for seniors in long term care facilities. The money has gone to all sorts of things, most of it untraceable, despite promises that improved staffing and care levels would result. Will you commit to rolling back the increased user fees for seniors in long term care facilities and replace the funding with public funding? How will you ensure that facilities' operations are transparent and that they are made accountable for improving staffing and care levels? The Provincial Conservatives have introduced new private for-profit MRI and CT clinics across Ontario. Some of the clinics are now open. Many of them have poached scarce staff out of public non-profit hospital clinics to work in the new private for-profit clinics despite government promises that this wouldn't happen. Will you commit to canceling the deals with these private companies and bringing the clinics - and staff - back into public non-profit hospitals? How will you ensure that these for-profit two tier clinics will not be introduced again? 15 Gervais Drive, Suite 305, Toronto, Ontario M3C 1Y8 416-441-2502 www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca **** make lots of copies on brightly coloured paper and pass them out to the audience This page is to be held up to help prompt your candidates to answer the question if they are trying to avoid it. ? ANSWER THE QUESTION Ontario Health Coalition 15 Gervais Drive, Suite 305, Toronto, Ontario M3C 1Y8 Tel: 416-441-2502 Fax: 416-441-4073 Email: ohc@sympatico.ca URL: www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca Getting People to Come to the Meeting The trick to getting people out is to prompt them by having them see the announcement several times and to get as many people phoned as possible. Here are some suggestions - not necessarily in priority order. Email: email out to all your lists and ask others to forward the message Get into your local cable, newspaper, TV, radio and other media listings Get the announcement up on as many public marquee signs as possible Call your community information center and arrange for a broadcast fax of the flier for the meeting to go to all community health and social service agencies Ask your co-sponsors to make commitments to put announcements out in their newsletters, on posters, and to phone their members} Phone your members and any other lists you have Poster in social service agencies, libraries, seniors' centers, health facilities, cafes and other public locations Mailing: send a letter or flier out to any mail lists you can access and get others to do the same Paid advertising: if you have a budget for it, buy an ad in the local paper the week before the event Talk it up! Get members to flier in their workplaces, and to talk it up. Publicize it at events in the week or two prior - make announcements at other events, or pass out fliers publicizing the meeting. Remember: the direct request by phone or in person is the most effective. Posters, emails, faxes and the like are great prompts but shouldn't be used to replace phoning or talking to people in person! ELECTION ALERT!** All Candidates' Meeting on Healthcare Issues Where: When: Do you want to know what is in store for: nursing homes, homecare, hospitals, OHIP, clinics, healthcare waiting lists? Come and Ask the Provincial Election Candidates The public is invited to ask questions of the candidates on healthcare issues. Free of charge. All welcome. Sponsored by: Contact for more information:
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