The Liberal Leadership Convention

It's going to be an interesting weekend. Tomorrow, Liberals will choose a new leader for their party. The hope that this new leader will be the one to defeat Stephen Harper in the next election. Personally, I think that whoever is elected Liberal leader will be the next Prime Minister, but not because of anything that the Liberal Party will have done right, but rather because of what the Conservatives will have done wrong. What this means is that Liberals have to think very carefully before selecting their new leader. Do they want to be led by a man who has turned out to be the most anti-peace leadership candidate in decades, Michael Ignatieff, who endorsed/supported the war on Iraq, endorses torture of detainees, "didn't lose sleep" over the massacre of Lebanese civilians in Qana and is really an American? Do they want to be led by a man who has proven time and again that he has no principles, Bob Rae, who still bears the baggage of governing in Ontario during the worst recession since the Great Depression? Do they want to be led by a personally detestable unknown from Toronto, Gerard Kennedy, who has yet to prove that he has any significant traction beyond southern Ontario?

I want to see Stephane Dion as the next leader of the Liberal Party, because of the four front-runners he is the one who will do the least damage to Canada. He is committed to greenhouse gas reductions, reducing atmospheric and water pollutants and a United Canada. He has experience in a successful government at the federal level which is lacking in all three other front runners. Dion is also on the centre-left of the political spectrum, and will support universal medicare remaining sole-payer and sole-provider. I say that I want to see Dion win, despite the fact that he will likely damage the NDP's prospects to expand in the next election. And that is because in the next election removing Stephen Harper and his paleo-cons from office is so important.

Having said that I will never, ever, vote Liberal, because they are the party that allowed social programmes across Canada to go down the tube with the massive cuts made to the transfer payments to the provinces. They are the party that created a surplus in the Employment Insurance programme by cutting benefits and raising premiums. They are the party that would prefer to cut corporate income taxes rather than spend money on affordable and supportive housing, despite the fact that some of the most powerful people in the party recognize that there is a desperate shortage of affordable housing. No, I will never vote Liberal.

Cheers

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