Dion Endorsement

As I have written in my last post, I support the candidacy of Stéphane Dion for the leadership of the Liberal Party. I think Stéphane is the best candidate because his courage, committment to the Liberal party and to Canada and intelligence, not to mention honesty, are not only unmatched by any other leadership candidate, but also by any politician that I know of in Canada right now... and perhaps since many years.

I am well aware of Dion's weaknesses. His English is imperfect. He has little charisma, if any. He is perceived as too serious/not entertaining enough - he is not the master of the ever-diminishing-number-of-seconds-sound-bite. And, although I wouldn't say it's his weakness, but rather that of those who believe this, there is a part of the party that has an anybody-but-a-Quebecker attitude to the leadership contest. That such attitudes exist is, I think, a shame, because they bar consideration of a candidate who is seen as one of the most qualified even by most of those who do not endorse him.

As for Stéphane's other shortcomings, they should not, in my opinion, be seen as disqualifying him from leading our party, because they would not disqualify him from being Prime Minister, which is, after all, what we ultimately want our leader to be. His imperfect English is no more so than Jean Chrétien's - and his French is certainly better. Nore is it worse than the French of other candidates, except Bob Rae, and maybe Ignatieff, or than Stephen Harper's. His lack of charisma is, again, comparable to Harper's... and he IS passionate about what he is doing. It just takes a few minutes to notice. When the new Liberal leader is elected, I assume the voters will take some time to make up their minds on him (or her). So they should notice. A related point is Stéphane's lack of mastery of the "soundbite". I'm not sure it is necessarily a bad thing. And if it is, it can probably, to some extent, be made up for.

No other candidate can, on the other hand, make up for Stéphane's decade-long loyal and unwavering service to the Liberal party and to Canada. He tackled the toughest assignments and succeeded when everyone expected him to fail, both on national unity and on the environment. He didn't retreat in the face of the separatists' ad hominem attacks, or of the best efforts of countries opposed to Kyoto to derail the Montreal climate-change conference. On separatism especially, he convinced those who doubted, and made the fanatics show their fanaticism. That last point is important, because the Liberal Party needs a leader who will show that Stephen Harper and his party and not centre-right moderates they claim to be while using Republican-like tactics to advance far-right policies.

Before ending this already too long post, I would like quickly to raise a couple of further points. First, Stéphane Dion, of all the candidates, is the one who has given the most specific policy proposals. To give just one example, he has a plan on equalisation, and has given its details at the Leadership Forum last weekend, unlike other candidates. Second, He has the integrity required not to use the "I-wrap-myself-in-the flag" rhetoric - even though he would certainly be more entitled to do it than Michael Ignatieff, or probably just about any Canadian politician.

In short, I support Stéhpane Dion because he is much more than any other candidate, Prime Minister material. He has the substance, integrity and courage to lead our country. We should not pass up the opportunity to chose him to lead our party.

Random Thoughts on Leadership Forum

Note: I support Stéphane Dion in the leadership race. I'll be explaining why soon - in the next few days anyway. Meanwhile, I wanted to make it clear, so that you feel free to accuse me of bias in his favour. I have not at all, however, made up my mind as to an eventual second choice, so I think I am relatively unbiased when comparing the other candidates.
Note #2: I have missed a part of the debate, but I have seen most of the 2 and a half hours.
Note #3: I realised, upon re-reading my post, that due to my rush to finish it yeasterday, it contained typing mistakes. I have corrected them now.

So there go my random thoughts on some of the candidates' performance, in no particular order:

Ken Dryden: Boring... we've been warned about that. And his French is really bad. His opening statement, though, was actualy among the best (even though you'd think that's where a boring candidate gets the best opportunity to show just how boring he/she is). I really liked his sentence "We don't write off!". An eventual campaign slogan?

Maurizio Bevilacqua: I was impressed by him. Perhaps because I didn't expect much. The emphasis on economics is welcome, because it's an important subject and no other candidate (perhaps except Scott Brison to some extent) seems to talk about it at any length. I liked his comment to the effect that we can't send soldiers to build democracy in Afghanistan after an undemocratic pseudo-debate in the House of Commons. His French is pretty good.

Stéphane Dion: He was the one who gave the most policy details whether on equalisation or foreign aid etc, if not the only one. He spoke too quickly, but it was at least partly to try to fit some substance in the 90-second speaking times. His English seems to be better than a few months ago - but that might be wishful thinking on my part. Still, it was not bad.

Bob Rae: Nice, serious, bilingual... why hasn't he become a Liberal a few years ago at least? Maybe next time...

Gerrard Kennedy: Too much of a social activist to my liking. I might not have heard correctly, but he seemed to have said (answering the EI question) something like "What's important is not access to jobs, and income, but to dignity". If he did say this, I really don't like him. Having a decent job is a big part of human dignity - at least for someone who wants to work (which most people do). Telling people "yeah you're poor, but it's ok 'cause I love and care for you" is simply hypocrite. I hope I misheard him. In any case, he's not what I want a future Prime Minister of Canada to be like. And his French is not good enough. It's not his wife that's important - it's he. And he still has a lot of work to do.

Scott Brison: Not bad... except for the NYT comment, which was really stupid... like the Blackberry gaffe. If the man has a tendency to do silly things from time to time, he shouldn't be our leader. His French is not aweful, but it's clearly unsatisfactory.

Michael Ignatieff: VERY STUPID explanation for his vote on Afghanistan. Even Brison's was better. The question was a very serious one, and a guy who is supposed to be supremely intelligent should not have been deciding it based on the reason Republicans give us because they want to avoid us to think. In general, Ignatieff has disappointed me. I knew I disagreed with him a lot, but I thought he'd still make me proud as a Liberal and as a Canadian if he became PM one day. I'm afraid I don't think so anymore.

Random thoughts on anti-terrorist operation in Toronto

Warning: I do not pretend that the following are the most important issues raised by the events. I hope they are, however, of some interest, because they have not, to the best of my knowledge, been raised by people more articulate and/or knowledgebale than I.

Random thought #1: No security certificates seem to have been needed to make the arrests. It looks like when there is a credible threat, the police has all the tools to make arrests and bring the suspects before judges, without using the certificates. So why does this aberration continue to exist? Here's an occasion for Mr. Harper to say that the Liberal government got something wrong... and be justified in saying it! But I'm not going to bet on him doing so.

Random thought #2: Speaking of Harper... He said the target of the alleged terrorist plot were Canadian values. Now isn't it extraordinary that the wannabe-terrorists would know what these are when so many law-abiding Canadians are still trying to figure it out? More seriously, this declaration is exactly the kind of truism the Right is getting us used to. Of course terrorists attack values... any terrorists do, whether Timothy McVeigh, the Red Brigades or Al-Qaeda. Yet the three don't do it for the same reasons and must probably be countered in very different ways. It would be interesting (and indeed necessary) for our leaders to be much more outspoken and forthcoming with the details, not just platitudes like "Al-Qaeda is evil" or "Saddam was a bad guy".