1. Patrick - July 18th, 2006

   Yeah I heard about this. Honestly, if the cons do want to engineer a vote on this in the fall it could go two ways.

   Liberal leadership and policy in a mess so tory’s win a handsome majority.

   However, the libs could do far worse than Bill Graham running an election (hedy fry, joe volpe, bob rae, all come to mind). If the party can get a few key policy positions ready, and if they can get some stuff ready the credibly throw back at the conservatives they might stand a chance of maintaining the current tory minority with them as opposition.

   If not… it’ll be 4-5 more years of harper. And while at this point he seems the best choice to lead the country I don’t relish another half decade of: increased income taxes, a pittance badly delivered on child care, no interest in the environment or Canada’s international commitments, and most of all his so called ‘flexible federalism’ which is nothing more than the carving up of Canada into fragmented bits.

   Cheers,

   P

2. kirk - July 18th, 2006

   If the Liberal party continues down the path that it has taken in the past, the Liberals just may be ready to bring down the government in an election - especially once a new leader is in place.

   I have, of course, mentioned before that the Liberal party is notorious for having one leader in place whilst the other is being prepared for the position. We saw how quickly some of the main names bowed out of the grit leadership race - they may have well been aware that the next leader of the grits would be a sacrificial lamb. I mean, grits lose horribly, tories go into power, and now there’s four years to train a new, charismatic leader and develop a new red book.

   That said, the new red book may already be done and Ignatieff or Kennedy are going to be the aforementioned charismatic leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

   Or maybe I’m completely wrong…

   Either way, the fall is going to be interesting…

3. Patrick - July 18th, 2006

   Oh absolutely.

   I agree with all of that except that none of the contenders seeking the grit leadership are charismatic, visionaries with the royal jelly necessary to do the job. Godfrey maybe. Ignatieff, I doubt it, Dion if he were charismatic, maybe, Brison, if he were older and had a policy platform, etc etc…

   Cheers,

   P

4. bitz - July 18th, 2006

   The thing I like about the article linked, and the part that I think ought to be brandished about in the negotiations with the united states is that if they want to say forget about NAFTA, then forget about the porportionality deal on energy. The threat of that ought to send the americans reeling. It has to cost less to move oil from Alberta to St Johns than it does to tank it in from venezuela.

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