With the Liberal leadership race now over, the Liberal party of Canada have overwhelmingly chosen a Quebec lawyer with heavily accented English to lead their party into the next election:Stéphane Dion.Anyone else have Chretien-vu about this?
While it is clear that a great many Canadians are beginning to feel the ideologue-driven Harper government may be wearing out its minority welcome, this step by the Liberals may well have handed him a majority in the next election, as early as this spring.
Why?
Many Canadians still have the debacle of the Chretien-Martin years fresh in their memories, and the entrenched notion that the Liberals are deeply corrupt and mired in the bureaucracy. The Conservatives are spared this only by the notion of Harper as a new young leader, though I have little doubt his government is a corrupt as any other. Leaders change, but governments stay the same, and Harper's attempts at becoming Bush-lite are both transparent and disturbing. He trumpets his ethics act while lambasting the opposition for fighting him, yet simultaneously removes supports and rights for minorities and women surreptitiously.
This latest move by the Liberals may in fact be a final move in a long string of political stratagems on the part of the Harper government and if so, I salute his strategist. Is it possible that by stripping the Liberals of their long held Quebec base by essentially cutting them off at the knees in terms of Quebec's status within a "United Canada", Harper has forced the Liberals in a collective box? A place where, in a panicked state, they reach out for the one man sure to unite Quebec and Ontario against the remainder of the country in an old familiar way? In doing so the Liberals have virtually handed Harper the keys to the castle by inviting comparisons to the Chretien-Martin era, and certainly have done themselves no favors outside of Quebec. Dion's broken English would be an embarrassment in regards to global relations if he were ever to become Prime Minister, and that thought alone may cost the Liberals dearly, as many Canadians are not supportive of the favoritism shown Quebec in the face of a unified country.
A French-as-a-first-language leader can only be a reminder of this.
Only time will tell but Harper may have conned the Liberals into crafting their own downfall, which is politics indeed. If only other would learn from this and do the same to him
