Canadians are dumb:  Stéphane Dion

Stéphane Dion didn’t really say that but he could have cut 17 or 18 minutes off his twenty minute press conference yesterday if he had. Dion announced that he had called on the Liberal Party of Canada to schedule a leadership convention, one in which he will not be a candidate. The Liberal leader also announced that he will remain at the helm until the new leader is chosen, dispelling last weekend’s rumours about which of the dwindling number of Liberal MPs would end up as interim leader.

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Dion couldn’t believe and still can’t believe the result of last week’s election. According to Steffi, he had the best vision and the best policies for a fairer and of course greener Canada but only 26 per cent of those who cast votes at the polls were intelligent enough to see this. The rest of us voters just were just too dumb to see the truth. The yahoos up in Wawa and Flin Flon and other parts of Canada were just so taken in by the Conservative Party’s advertising that they simply couldn’t see or appreciate reality. Professor Dion did acknowledge some personal responsibility for the lowest Liberal Party percentage vote since Confederation but only to extent that a teacher blames himself for the failings of his students in able to pass the course. His huge loss was the fault of the Conservative Party propaganda machine that mesmerized three quarters of the country’s voters. The most significant factor in the election, at least regarding the Liberal Party was M. Dion’s environmental policy, The Green Shift. According to Dion, Canadians would benefit from huge tax cuts, which by the sounds of it, the likes of which have never been seen in this country before while the tax on carbon would make the polluters pay. The expensive and effective ad campaign that the Tories ran during the campaign was certainly a factor in the reelection of the Harper Conservative’s but Dion showed utter contempt for those whom he feels are clearly his inferiors when he singled out the “propaganda machine” as pretty well the only reason that he failed to become Prime Minister. During the campaign Dion kept stressing that his Green Shift would be revenue neutral. Sorry but we’ve heard that all before and when something is declared by a government to be revenue neutral, the taxpayer inevitably ends up getting hit in the pocketbook. It’s all nice and good to say that the polluter pays but as soon as polluters write a cheque, they look for the easiest way to pass the cost on to the end consumer. And it’s usually not that difficult. And getting a bigger tax refund in the spring does nothing to help marginal income families pay their winter heating bills. Despite all of the global warming hysteria, Canada still gets pretty cold in most places during the winter. But Dion gives no credence to the concerns of ordinary Canadians, choosing instead to characterize them as simply dumb lemmings blindly following the propaganda spewed out by those evil (and rich) Conservatives. The Liberals had perhaps their smoothest sailing in recent years right after the 2006 election. Prime Minister Paul Martin resigned on election night after having lost to Stephen Harper and then MP Bill Graham took over as interim leader. That was best for the party and the country and in the end, for Martin. But now Stéphane Dion, the biggest loser since the country was formed, has the arrogance to insist that he has to stay on. One of the reasons he’s staying is to prevent the Tories from doing to the next leader what they did to him. Well, the reality is that if the next leader can’t handle the Conservatives, he or she doesn’t deserve to be the leader. Dion also wants to stay on in order to raise funds for the party and to bring fundraising into the 21st century. He’s shown absolutely no interest or ability in doing these things in the almost two years that he led the party; he’s certainly not needed now. How Dion thinks that he, better than anyone else, can bring money to the Liberal Party is mindboggling. These are signs of someone who is in denial about what happened on October 14 and simply cannot believe that everyone couldn’t see that he is the only person able to lead the country. He’s a bright guy and it’s actually sad in a way to see him fume about how most Canadians didn’t understand his policies. He deserves more pity than anger for the contemptuous way he looked down on his fellow Canadians who chose to continue under the leadership of Stephen Harper. On the bright side, Stéphane Dion will be around for a few months to provide entertainment to all those mentally challenged Canadians who didn’t quite understand his Green Shift. Watching Dion will make a nice break from weaving baskets.

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