By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, April 16, 2007
As we all know, drinking and driving is a criminal offence. Although it has been against the law almost since the automobile was invented, it has only been considered a serious offence in the last 20 years or so. Times change. It seems strange that if you get behind the wheel of a car with a blood alcohol level of .09 you can, theoretically at least, end up in jail. But you can go to a Liberal Party of Canada leadership convention, drink for an entire weekend, and then vote for who will ostensibly be the next prime minister of Canada. Go figure.
A lot of Liberals are now having sober second thoughts about choosing Stphane Dion as their leader in light of the astonishing deal that he made with Green Party leader Elizabeth May. The twosome agreed that the Liberals would not run a candidate in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, currently held by Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay and chosen by May as the riding that she will seek election in. In exchange, the Greens (perhaps with their new love of the Liberals, they should be called the "Red Green Party") will not field a candidate in Dion's Quebec riding when the election writ is dropped.
It is doubtful that Steffi has really thought this through. But who can blame him, what with having to save the planet and decide who to vote for in the upcoming French elections? Dion has shown that he is simply too weak a leader to ever be prime minister of Canada. If the country hasn't noticed this yet, it hasn't bypassed a number of prominent Liberals.
Symbolically, by refusing to field a candidate in Peter Mackay's riding, the Liberals have ceased to be a national party. And the professor has thumbed his nose at the grassroots members of the party who were set to battle the Foreign Affairs minister in the next election. In fairness to Dion, he promised to field more women candidates in the next election; he never said that they would all be Liberals.
By making his little deal, Dion has made Peter Mackay out to be more important that he actually is. Oh sure, he was fun to watch when Belinda Stronach "quit" him like she quit practically everything else in her life. And watching him make goo-goo eyes at U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was quite entertaining. But another Harper government, minority or majority, would function quite nicely if Mackay ended up losing and being dispatched to patronage heaven.
A win by May would legitimize the Green Party as a "real" Canadian party. Without deciding whether or not that would be good or bad for the country, the fact that there will be four opposition parties instead of three in the House of Commons will not make the government's job any easier. This will be something that a future Prime Minister Dion will probably live to regret.
It will be interesting to see what the Liberal voters in Central Nova will do; they may stay home on election day; they may even vote Tory. Peter Mackay's loss is hardly a slam dunk and his re-election will make Steffi look weaker than he actually is if indeed that is possible.
Other than her environmental credentials, we know very little about Elizabeth May, the woman who leads the party that Dion has now aligned himself with. Last week it surfaced that one of her candidates, Kevin Potvin, had written an article about how terrific he felt on 9/11 when he saw the attacks on the Pentagon and the twin towers fall. It took May way too long, over two days, to issue a statement saying that she would not sign his nomination papers And the reason she gave was that "Non-violence is one of the Green Party's fundamental principles". It's harder to imagine a weaker denunciation of Potvin than a general Ghandiesque condemnation of violence. The fact that innocent civilians, 25 of whom were Canadian, died that day didn't seem worth mentioning. All of this of course has nothing to do with the Liberals or Stphane Dion, but it reflects badly on the Official Opposition when Dion has aligned himself so closely with May.
Although the environment is an important issue with Canadians, it is not the be all and end all that environmental zealots like Dion think it is. His deal with May shows that he is indeed a one trick pony. Dion's worshipping at the alter of global warming will likely lead to his political downfall, a downfall that will most likely come from within. Dion has shown that the dithering that Paul Martin so excelled in does have its advantages.
And to all you Liberals out there – next time, stay sober!
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