The obnoxious line Stéphane Dion keeps repeating is that he won't bring down the government because "we know the Canadian people do not want an election now."
Listen, genius, why do you think they don't want an election? Because they can't picture you as prime minister, even if they don't like Stephen Harper much. It's not a phrase to mouth smugly.
I don't want to pick nits, but I think we have the right to expect an opposition to do some opposing and its leader to take an active role. I know it's not easy when you're in a minority situation, but that doesn't give you permission to head off into some completely other job description, like playing political chess with Stephen Harper.
You say you're against policies and keep voting for them. After a while, it looks like a farce. Real political discussion dies of strangulation. That's when it's time to go ahead and have a damn election. Bring them down even if the government wants you to. Nyah, nyah to them. Some bullets you gotta bite.
If Afghanistan is a mistake, then more Canadian soldiers will die futilely, and fingering the Stanley Cup in Kandahar is no tradeoff. The travesty isn't that they die; it's that they die for no good reason. About that we need a debate, and we're not getting it in this Parliament. The same goes for other issues of our foreign policy: Hamas, Kosovo, the United Nations conference on racism, interference in U.S. politics - and a likely U.S. attack on Iran.
Domestically, the Harper government has whittled down its surpluses through tax cuts and debt repayment, so there's little left for public programs at a moment when a severe economic crisis has begun. This is in line with neo-con strategy for the past 25 years: Reduce revenues so that social programs are simply unaffordable. Back to the jungle. Everyone for themselves. We should have a debate on this. We're not getting it.
The sole area where this Parliament did something was uncovering the Mulroney-Schreiber mess. Stéphane Dion had little to do with that.
I was at the Liberal convention that chose him, and I don't think they made a mistake - he was the best choice at the time. He campaigned well, especially on the environment. He related to party members, and his English didn't seem a handicap. Michael Ignatieff was the candidate of party bosses and torture lite (which means it doesn't leave marks, and so is deniable). He supported the U.S. war on Iraq that most Canadians abhor. He was too scary and still is, leering over the Dion shoulder in Question Period. Ex-NDPer Bob Rae would have been humiliating. Had he run in even one election as a Liberal before offering to take over their party, they'd probably have gone with him.
But Stéphane Dion seems to have abandoned his strong card, the environment, or been abandoned by it, in the form of a very wintry winter, which Stephen Harper must bless. I don't think voters have been unconvinced about the danger of global warming, but it hasn't been in their faces as it was last year, and it's up to an opposition leader to keep the issue alive, which he hasn't done. He just didn't work out. These things happen. He won't improve in the current situation, so what is he waiting for - a miracle?
He's still the leader of the opposition, not the avoider of the next election. Give people a choice. Take the democratic route. They'll feel involved again, and see him under fire. He gets to test himself, maybe it'll turn around, lots of weird things happen in elections.
If not, he loses. It isn't the end of the world - the only thing that's the end of the world is the end of the world. Oh, wait, that's one of the issues, isn't it? Planetary disaster in climatic form.
Well, M. Dion, if you feel the future of the Earth is at stake and you are uniquely qualified to safeguard it, then here's your chance to convince the rest of us, and why is there no hurry to get on with that task?
