Dion Still Full of Hot Air and Partisanship

The Liberal Party of Canada is a mess right now. They were the big losers of the recent election, their "leader" has stepped down (sort of...), the leadership convention is seven months away and they are broke. The party is only marginally ready to run a leadership contest and nowhere near ready to fight another election. Despite this, former/interim leader Stephane Dion is running his mouth, issuing challenges to Prime Minister Harper and his Tory government.

Most recently, Mr. Dion has announced that the Liberal Party will not be giving any free rides to the Conservative government as it did in the last parliament by abstaining from confidence votes so as not to bring down the government.

"Mr. Dion says the Liberals will voted against any legislation they disagree with, even if the Tories deem the proposals confidence matters" -- Globe and Mail

The funny thing about this is that the Liberals were better prepared to "grow a pair" back when they were abstaining from votes than they are now. The Liberals and the electorate are not ready for another election and will only create further problems in Canadian politics.

There only only two reasons that come to mind about why Dion would come out of the Liberal caucus meetings with this kind of message; 1) Dion wants another chance at being the leader during an election. If he can bring down the government before May then he would be responsible for leading the party due to his interim status. 2) the Liberals have realized that their base is eroding, even their in their hardcore bastions of support. This could be a calculated show to try to win back some of their eroding supporters. This scenario would probably entail the Liberals voting down anything that is not a confidence matter so that come the next election, the Liberals will be able to say that they opposed the Conservative's policies.

So, the way I see it, Canadians are either going to have another election forced upon them or we will see a parliament session marred by greater partisanship and little policy success. Either way, Canadians lose.

I have been watching a lot of the fallout out and commentary of Barack Obama's presidential election and the one thing that I find truely surprising is that many Republicans, including presidential runner-up John McCain have committed to working with Obama and the Democrats, both in the House of Representatives and the Senate, to lead the United States out of these troubling times. In other words, they are putting aside their differences for the good of the nation.

On the other hand, we see the fall out of the Canadian election where there has almost been a commitment to extreme partisanship by the parties of the opposition. These parties and their leaders are against the Conservatives pretty much no matter what they propose. Canada is heading into troubled times as well. Our economy is lagging; unemployment is up, the dollar is down and we face international threats; both from a security standpoint and from climate change. Now is not the time for petty squabbling; Canadian politicians need to look to their counterparts from the South and follow their lead. The security and prosperity of the nation must ALWAYS come before the interests of individual parties. It is my sincere hope that the parties of Canada's opposition embrace this when Parliament reconvenes next week.

- blenCOWe