Politic-O-Pinion

I share your frustration at not bringing this government down, butIt isn’t all Dion’s fault; it’s the Nervous Nellies in his caucus and his advisers - most who weren’t Dion supporters - who are giving him the advice not to go. True, he could ignore that.. but its rather hard to when a large section of your caucus and such are pleading with you to wait. They also need to be called out, not just Dion.

I am a federal Liberal, but am rather alienated at the provincial (Ontario) level although I wouldn’t dream of voting for the NDP nor John Tory. Terry’s perspective was interesting, re the federal scene, but the thing people must remember is that an election in the near future will almost certainly give the same result. The Liberals might pick up a seat or two because of the Greens taking votes from the out-of-date NDP, but they might lose a few because of so much vote-splitting to the left of Harper. The electorate would be enraged at the Liberals for bringing down Harper if the resulting election produced basically what we have now, and might punish the Liberals if they brought down Harper a second time. The Conservatives wouldn’t dump Harper if he won another minority, but the Liberals would replace Dion, but with whom? Whenever I vote, I notice that almost all the other voters are well over 40, and so Rae could never win Ontario, because we remember the Rae years. Ignatieff is bright, but he has an American accent (pronouncing “hall” as “hole”), and although he’s likeable and is a respected intellectual, he isn’t as witty and eloquent as P. E. Trudeau was. I like some of the other candidates from last time, e..g. Martha Hall Findlay, but can she win the hick vote? Tobin and Manley would have a rough ride becoming leader because the “lurking in the wings waiting for the right moment” ploy would be soooo transparent that I can’t imagine them trying that. As an environmentalist, I like Dion, but the media really beats up on him and misportrays him. Dion should forget Quebec because he’s a Trudeau federalist who won’t play the Quebecois separatist blackmail game, and so they don’t like him there. He should focus on Ontario and play the environmental card, but avoid harping on Kyoto because most Canadians rightly see Kyoto as a hugely flawed accord that means nothing if Asian countries refuse to act like grown-ups and do their part. Kyoto was sold based on the lie that India and China (and therefore the US) would start to do their part in 2012, but now it is clear that they will NEVER do their part, that we were conned. The government should put a carbon tax on imports from countries that are doing nothing to reduce emissions - that would create more jobs in Canada, Most Canadians would rather pay a few bucks more for Canadian-made goods, because EI deductions would be lower and it would balance out. You’d have Canadian workers paying income taxes in Canada. Chinese goods are frequently of poor quality, and their factories are allowed to pollute more. Another final point is that I think that some Liberals want a snap election because they don’t like Dion and want another leadership race, but if the US economy tanks badly and drags Canada down a bit, the Tories will wear it, so the Liberals would have a better chance of winning if they were to wait. Yes, it’s frustrating to see the situation drag on and on, but I think it is the smartest thing to do.