December 2008 Book Club Selection, The Rights Revolution, Michael Ignatieff

Canada a world leader on human rights in various ways

With Michael Ignatieff poised to be the next leader of the Liberal party -- even if merely by default -- his ideas are about to become of greater consequence to the country than ever before.

Fortunately, the man who would be Opposition Leader -- and, if he and his party have their way, Prime Minister -- has plenty of ideas, and has published plenty of books to back them up.

Perhaps one of the most relevant -- if a person were forced to choose -- are some of his ideas on human rights. While some of his prior ideas have proven to be very controversial -- such as musings often mischaracterized as support for torture -- Ignatieff is a man who understands the concept.

In 2000, Ignatieff gave the inaugural Vincent Massey lecture on the topic of human rights. That lecture has since been published in the form of a book.

In the book, Ignatieff notes the importance of rights speech in Canadian society and explains how this focus on individual and group rights in Canada has led the country into a key position of leadership in regards to human rights. He argues that Canadian rights speech has become a model emulated elsewhere in the world.

As such, the Canadian government will always have important global responsibilities vis a vis human rights. It hasn't always lived up to these responsibilities -- such as when Jean Chretien refused to even discuss the matter with Chinese President Jiang Zemin except under extremely cloaked terminology -- but it maintains these responsibilities nonetheless.

The Rights Revolution provides a valuable road map for the Canadian global human rights agenda -- one that leaders of all stripes could benefit from, and one that Ignatieff himself should be held to if he ever succeeds in his Prime Ministerial ambitions.

An Ill-Concieved Coronation

With only one candidate left, the Liberal party dismisses the prospect of renewal

In the midst of what has already been a historical two weeks in Canadian politics, the Liberal party has decided to set just a little more.

With Bob Rae and Dominic Leblanc both having dropped out of the Liberal leadership race, only one candidate currently remains -- Michael Ignatieff. The expectation now is that Ignatieff will be coronated as the leader of the Liberal party.

Never before in modern history has the Liberal party decided its leader by having all the other candidates simply fold their campaigns.

"I am not a candidate for the interim leadership, nor shall I pursue my candidacy for the party leadership at the Vancouver convention," Rae announced today. "I believe that the Liberal Party of Canada requires a new leader to be in place before Parliament returns at the end of January."

Rae's intent is clearly to keep the Coalition alive long enough to try and defeat the government on January 27th. The Liberals certainly do stand a better chance of doing this with a full-time leader in place rather than simply an interim leader.

But just as many Liberals are beginning to question whether or not the Coalition itself is a good idea, a great many Liberals should question if simply choosing a leader in such a clearly ad-hoc fashion is good for the party.

Many rank and file Liberals are undertaking an extensive process renewal process at the grassroots level. But in order for this renewal process to truly penetrate the upper echelons of the Liberal elite the selection of the new Liberal leader needs to be conducted in concert with that process of renewal. The leader selected needs to be one accepting the results of that renewal process.

Instead, the best they can now hope for is to conduct their renewal process around the selection of the new leader. Instead of choosing a leader who reflects the principles and values established by that renewal, they'll be attempting to adapt that renewal to a leader essentially chosen by default.

Perhaps that's the reason why Ignatieff himself should invite new candidates into the race and insist that it continue -- a leader chosen by default, at the head of a party that has already proven itself willing to sacrifice its principles vis a vis national unity, will find his credibility with the Canadian people to be very short.

Figures as near and dear to the Liberal elite as former President of the Liberal Party Stephen LeDrew have recognized the folly of an Ignatieff coronation.

Unsurprisingly, LeDrew blames Dion:

"Even in taking his leave, Stephane Dion can't get it straight. By stating that the party needs a leader before the Commons resumes at the end of January, he is effectively rejecting the benefits of a considered leadership debate, while robbing tens of thousands of Liberals of their voice in choosing their own leader."

Hopefully, Ignatieff sees the folly in all of this as well.

For the Liberal party's own good they simply cannot afford to rush to coronate a leader, and certainly not under circumstances as dubious as these.


Other bloggers writing on this topic:

"The" Scott Ross - "Ignatieff and Arrogance"

My Politicophobia - "Screw You Bob Rae"

Dysfunctional Parrot - "Bob Rae Gets Out of Dodge City"

Pearce Richards - "Hey Liberals, Chill the Fuck Out. You Did This to Yourselves."

Stephane the Not-Quite Gone

Dion to step down as Liberal leader a little sooner

For those paying close attention to the winding-down of Stephane Dion's flirtation with the leadership of the Liberal party, a noticeable pattern is starting to emerge:

Dion is going to step down as the leader of the Liberal party. ...But not just yet.

Today Stephane Dion announced (again) that he will step down as the leader of the Liberal party. In a press statement released today Dion announced he will "step aside as Leader of the Liberal Party effective as soon as [his] successor is duly chosen."

However, that time will now come much sooner than previously expected, as the Liberal party prepares to significantly bump up its leadership convention.

"As the Governor General has granted a prorogation, it is a logical time for us Liberals to assess how we can best prepare our party to carry this fight forward," Dion mused.

"There is a sense in the party, and certainly in the caucus, that given these new circumstances the new leader needs to be in place before the House resumes. I agree. I recommend this course to my party and caucus."

The Liberals are now pointing toward a date in January for the selection of their new leader. They're even considering an online balloting process in order to streamline the affair.

Still, January will not be soon enough for some Liberals.

Among the high profile Liberals calling for Dion's immediate resignation are Stephen LeDrew and John Manley, who can't wait to see Dion gone.

Considering Dion's recent behaviour -- striking a deal with the NDP and the separatist Bloc Quebecois to form a coalition government -- LeDrew and Manley are both right to demand Dion's immediate resignation. Any Liberals who understand the consequences of Dion's proposal should be doing likewise. Doubtlessly, many are.

But the January date for the selection of Dion's replacement is as big a mistake for the Liberal party as the Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition would have been for the country. What the Liberal party needs is a complete process of institutional renewal -- something much like the Liberal 308 initiative, and it needs to choose a leader that reflects its renewed values and principles.

It cannot do this if it rushes to coronate either Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae as Dion's eagerly-awaited replacement.

With Dion set to finally relinquish the reigns of power in the Liberal party, it seems that the Grit elites are still planning to take shortcuts to the resumption of the reigns of power federally.

Just as before, it will almost certainly prove to be a disaster for all those involved.


Other bloggers writing on this topic

Prairie Tory - "Stephane Dion to Step Down"

Chucker Canuck 2.0 - "Dion, Then and Now"

Red Canuck - "Dion's Gone... Now What?

Adieu Stephane!

Manley says it's time for Dion to go

In the wake of what appears to be a failed attempt to set up a Coalition government, Stephane Dion's deferred resignation as Liberal leader may be rescheduled to a much earlier date.

John Manley, for one, can't see it happen soon enough.

"The first step for my party is to replace Stephane Dion as leader with someone whose first job is to rebuild the Liberal Party, rather than leading a coalition with the NDP," Manley wrote in today's Globe and Mail.

"The notion that the public would accept Stephane Dion as prime minister, after having resoundingly rejected that possibility a few weeks earlier, was delusional at best," Manley continued. "Mr. Dion had seemed to accept responsibility for the defeat (although somewhat reluctantly), and should have left his post immediately."

Manley's message is a simple one, indeed: Liberal party should not be looking for shortcuts back to political power. Instead, it needs to finally accept responsibility for its defeat -- this means it must stop blaming its erstwhile Coalition partner for its self-inflicted misfortunes -- and work on rebuilding itself into a party capable of winning and commanding power.

While Manley falls short on several counts -- for example, trying to blame the Conservatives for stirring up a national unity crisis while his own party hatches irresponsible and reckless deals with the separatist Bloc Quebecois -- his assessment of the Liberal leadership is spot-on.

The sooner the Liberal party divests itself of Dion's leadership -- perhaps as early as this upcoming Monday -- the better off it will be.

While Manley's comments should be considered anything but a declaration of intention to change his mind regarding seeking the Liberal leadership, they do suggest that Manley is precisely the type of leader the Liberal party needs right now.


Other bloggers writing on this topic:

Murphy's Point - "Liberals Between a Nasty Rock and a Ridiculous Hard Place"

Russ Campbell - "Sticky Dion Stuck to the Liberal Boot"

Ron Paul War Room - "What Would a Canadian Coalition Government Mean for NAFTA and the SPP?"

Tories in For Sleepless Nights?

Ding Dong the Green Shift's Dead

Ignatieff, Rae, LeBlanc abandon Green Shift for good

In the aftermath on an election in which Stephane Dion staked his party's fortunes on his Green Shift plan and lost, it was only a matter of time before the Liberal party left it in the pages of history's footnotes.

As such, it's back to the drawing board for the Liberal party.

"You go back to the drawing board on how do you get to where we want to get to in a way that's going to be eminently practical and a way that's going to raise the interest and the passion of Canadians," Rae said. "It's not like cod liver oil. You've got to make sure that what we're providing for people is something that they actually want."

"The voters have told us to come back and think again about how to reconcile environmental sustainability and economic progress," added Ignatieff.

For Ignatieff, his casual abandonment of the Green Shift could become more ammunition for his opponents to use against him. After all, in 2006 he ran for the Liberal leadership on the strength of a carbon tax plan. Stephane Dion adopted a carbon tax and suffered one of the worst losses in the Liberal party's history.

Many Liberals will likely be forgiven if they come to suspect that Ignatieff's next big idea will be a comparably bad one.

Dominic LeBlanc has also confirmed that the Green Shift won't be part of his platform.

Bob Rae, at the very least, seems to have learned a lesson from the entire Green Shift debacle.

"You don't start with a theory," Rae said. "You start with the hard bedrock of the experience of Canadians in all walks of life. If you lose sight of that you can have an interesting life, but it won't be a successful political one."

Now, the only question that remains is thus: will the three candidates in the Liberal leadership race approach Liberals -- and, later, Canadians -- with a pragmatic -- even if ambitious -- program for running the country, or will they resort back to Liberal hallmark gimmickry?

Only time will tell.

Justin Trudeau Calls for a Generational Shift in Canadian Politics

Son of Trudeau calls for more youth involvement in politics

If Justin Trudeau was unaware of one particular fact about Canadian politics, he's likely to learn it very quickly.

When your name is Trudeau, it isn't hard to get someone to come out to hear you speak.

In Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Trudeau drew a crowd of 1,000 people to a party fundraiser where he talked about the need to get Canada's youth involved in politics -- or at least in the Liberal party.

“The challenge that we face as a political organization at all levels, both federal and provincial, is the idea of mobilizing our young people,” Trudeau announced. “We need to reach out to young people as more than just campaign volunteers who lick envelopes and put up posters, but as those who actually have input and are valued for their idealism, their energy and the way of thinking they bring in, which is a lot more long-term.”

Trudeau noted that too many Canadians are being drawn into one-issue political movements. Youth especially so.

Trudeau's musings seem to closely resemble leadership candidate Dominic LeBlanc's recent calls for a generational shift within the Liberal party.

And by that he doesn't simply mean selecting himself -- at 41, the youngest of the officially declared candidates -- for the leadership.

"It's not enough to change the head, you have to renew the whole and that's done with a new generation of leadership that springs the party forward," LeBlanc insists.

Some may have to wonder if Trudeau embracing LeBlanc's "generational shift" idea is a prelude to an endorsement of LeBlanc. But if "like father, like son" can be considered a rule of Canadian politics, one may also question the extent of Trudeau's commitment to any such generational shift.

Trudeau's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, first got himself elected Prime Minister using two broad promises: that of the "Just Society" and that of making Canadian politics more participatory.

In the end, the vague Just Society promised was abandoned entirely. And Trudeau's "participatory democracy" was ultimately meant only for those who were members of the Liberal party -- regardless of whether they had voted for the Liberals or not.

For the most part, Justin Trudeau, like his father, is making a positive impression on the Canadian political scene. But sometimes these impressions are hard to keep up, and Trudeau would be wise to remember that the polish can wear off a politician quickly if he's found to be too flexible in regard to his promises.

Trudeau should remember one other lesson his father's example teaches: always back a winner. Most analysts consider the prospects for an "up the middle" victory for the Liberal leadership to be rather faint.

He would be much better off backing either of the two main contenders.

Media Out, Gloves Off

Liberal leadership forum turns ugly

Before officially embarking on their Liberal leadership campaigns, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae promised to keep their campaign civil.

"We've talked about the importance of civility, talked about the importance of people working together, talked about the importance of how we build the party, talked about the importance of how we make sure that we can defeat the Conservatives," Rae previously said.

Ignatieff has even mused that he's more interested in running his campaign against the governing Conservative party than against his fellow leaders.

Now, with news of the unpleasantness ensuing at the first forum of the leadership campaign, a great many Liberals should be asking themselves what happened.

It seems the first problem arose with some confusion over whether or not the media would be allowed access to the debate.

Bob Rae insisted that he wouldn't attend under those grounds.

"It sends an awful signal to have a debate that is closed to the media, closed to Canadians," Rae insisted. "I am calling for open debates, and I think we have to start right now, this weekend."

Furthermore, the news release accused Michael Ignatieff's campaign of barring media presence from the debate, something that Ignatieff himself claims to know little about. Instead, he insists it's the Liberal party behind the move.

"I don't make the rules. The party makes the rules. I show up and do what the party tells me to do," Ignatieff insisted. "The party wants to have a family discussion and that's what we're going to do this afternoon."

Ignatieff further insisted that all three campaigns had agreed to the rule. Rae clearly disagrees. "What we agreed to is that we would come. The idea that it would be closed is news to me," he insisted. "You can't have a town hall without a town."

On that note, Rae has clearly drawn first blood in this campaign. After all, Liberals from across the country will be sending delegates to vote in Vancouver for the next Liberal leader. Thus, it isn't at all unreasonable to insist that Liberals across the country have a right to know what's being discussed in each and every leadership forum, and have a right to know about the positions being taken by each and every candidate (all three of them to date).

Perhaps the big winner is Dominic LeBlanc. While Rae and Ignatieff trade shots over who's making the rules and how, LeBlanc is choosing to try to stand above the entire mass.

"The game hasn't even started and they're at each other's throats," LeBlanc said.

But at the same time, such comments may undermine LeBlanc's standing as a serious contender. LeBlanc's apparent disinterest in the nature of the rules betrays a recognition that they may mean very little to his campaign: one way or the other, either Miachel Ignatieff or Bob Rae will lead the Liberals into a future election, and LeBlanc will be a kingmaker at best.

For his own part, LeBlanc echoes Ignatieff's narrative that each candidate's opponent in this campaign should be Stephen Harper. "I believe that for the sake of the Liberal Party this leadership process should proceed in a civil way where the opponent is Stephen Harper, and the opponents aren't other Liberals," LeBlanc insisted.

But once again, many Liberals will likely choose to take issue with the notion that external policy differences are more important than internal ones when discucssing the Liberal leadership -- particularly in a party with as stark a left/right divide as the Liberals.

With no media access to the debates, accusations flying over who's making the rules and why, and suggestions by two candidates that internal policy differences are largely off-limits, many Liberals may be questioning whether this leadership campaign will turn out any more favourably than the last.

Michael Ignatieff Formally Joins the Fray

Liberal leadership campaign shaping up to be Ignatieff/Rae rematch

After nearly three weeks of waiting, it seems that the Liberal party finally has a leadership contest on its hands.

Michael Ignatieff -- long expected to join the leadership fray -- finally formally declared his candidacy yesterday. Now, the real business of choosing a Liberal leader can begin.

Ignatieff has an interesting strategy for becoming Liberal leader: instead of running against his opponents, he'll simply run against Stephen Harper.

"Now I'm going to be in competition with some fine fellow Liberals but I'm not running against any of them, I'm running against Stephen Harper and the Conservative government," Ignatieff insisted. "My target is not my friends and my Liberal colleagues, it is the disappointing record of the Harper government."

Of course, Harper won't actually be running for the leadership of the Liberal party, but one digresses.

Not to mention that when Ignatieff last had the opportunity to run against Harper and the Conservatives, he instead spent the better part of the 2008 federal election being largely invisible.

Ignatieff has his vision for the renewal of the Liberal party. Namely, "throwing open the doors of this party to the next generation, to the best and brightest our society has to offer."

Not that Ignatieff, 61, is feeling his age. "The youngest ideas aren't always from the youngest candidates. I think age is not a biological fact. It's a habit of spirit and mind."

This comes in response to Dominic LeBlanc's insistence that the party needs a generational shift. Which it very well might, but LeBlanc, 41, may not be the best individual to rally the youth wing of the party. Justin Trudeau (who, once again, isn't running for the Liberal leadership) would be much better.

Ignatiefff's candidacy certainly must relieve some deep worries at Liberal HQ, as they finally have two solid leadership candidates for Liberals to choose between.

The Liberal leadership campaign is finally on.

Glass Ceiling Breakage Deferred

No women in Liberal leadership race as Martha Hall Findlay demurs

In what's emerging as the latest in an amusing trend that should be very distressing to many Liberals, yet another potential contender has bowed out of the impending Liberal leadership campaign, set to conclude in April.

Martha Hall Findlay will not run to replace Stephane Dion, making it more likely that there may be no women in the Liberal leadership race.

Ironically, it was Dion himself who had pledged to improve the prominence of women in the party by nominating more of them for elected office. In his wake, however, it seems that women are no more prominent within the party than before. Considered it merely yet another one of Dion's unaccomplished goals.

The party has clearly not come very far since the days when Sheila Copps stayed in the Jean Chretien/Paul Martin leadership contest just for the sake of keeping a woman in the race.

While Ruby Dhalla may still run, one has to consider that the hiked entry fee for the contest -- up to $90,000 from $50,000 in 2006 -- may keep dark horse candidates such as Dhalla out.

While the lack of women in the race will almost certainly prove to be distressing to many Liberals, the lack of candidates in general should only more so. So far, Justin Trudeau, Frank McKenna and John Manley have all decided not to seek the leadership.

While Michael Ignatieff will almost certainly do so again, only two candidates -- Dominic LeBlanc and Bob Rae -- have formally declared. One has to imagine that many Liberals are becoming concerned with the lack of real options that will be open to them come April.

Update - Gerard Kennedy has officially announced that he won't be seeking the Liberal leadership. Nor will Denis Coderre.
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That now places the tally at two confirmed candidates, and six declining candidates.

Things must be getting very tense at Liberal Party HQ.

The Smartest Little French Boy (In Shorts)

Manley to Liberal Party: Thanks, But No Thanks

Manley will not seek Liberal leadership

With Frank McKenna having previously decided not to seek the Liberal leadership, it's interesting to note that it seems there are currently more Liberals announcing they won't seek the leadership than announcing their candidacy.

Justin Trudeau quickly declined.

The aforementioned McKenna has demurred.

Now, John Manley has announced that he won't be running for the Liberal leadership.

"I truly found that in my mind and heart, I have moved on from the world of elected office," Manley announced. "I also found that I lacked the burning ambition necessary to mount and sustain such a campaign."

While these must have almost certainly been factors in Manley's decision not to run, his known dedication to the Afghanistan mission was likely also a factor. Should fellow supporter of the mission Michael Ignatieff decide to run, the Afghanistan war will almost certainly become an issue in the leadership campaign.

If the Liberal party's official support for the mission were placed in jeopardy, Ignatieff and Manley simply would not be able to afford to split any voting bloc supportive of the war.

While there's likely the previously mentioned personal factor involved in Manley's decision, it's hard t imagine that pragmatism hasn't played a role as well.

On a concluding note, the Liberal leadership convention is still more than six months away. Plenty of time remains for more leadership hopefuls to declare their candidacy, but waiting too long should generally be considered a mistake. Momentum is important in such contests, and giving up too much to a candidate like Bob Rae could very well put this race out of reach for many would-be candidates.

A few more Liberals should follow the example of Manley, McKenna, Trudeau, Rae and Dominic LeBlanc: declare their intentions early, or not at all.

And Then There Were Two

Bob Rae declares candidacy for Liberal leadership

Liberal (interim) leader Stephane Dion is searching for a new Foreign Affairs critic today, as Bob Rae has resigned that post in order to pursue the Liberal leadership.

Although he and principal rival Michael Ignatieff had to settle on Dion as the compromise candidate in the 2006 Liberal leadership contest, this time around Rae intends to win.

"Our campaign will be stronger, better organized than it was last time, and we're going to win. I'm looking forward to it very much," Rae announced.

Of course, Rae will face the same questions regarding his dismal record as the NDP Premier of Ontario. "People say, 'well, Bob Rae has a history,' and I just say 'you're damn right I have a history,'" Rae admitted. "I've worked very hard in public life in this country for 30 years."

If Rae can take ownership of the Liberal left wing and find sufficient support from the soft middle, he can very much be a contender in this leadership contest. However, he may still have to contend with Ujjal Dosanjh, who was the former NDP Premier of British Columbia.

Dosanjh seemingly has yet to make a final decision about whether or not he'll make an attempt at the Liberal leadership. One has to imagine that the big factor standing in the way of that decision is the recounts he continues to face in his riding of Vancouver-South.

If Dosanjh -- whose margin of victory shrank to a mere 22 votes in a recount involving only 18 of 184 ballot boxes and rejected ballots -- loses his riding, it will be hard for his campaign to gain any traction. The prospects of the Liberal party electing a leader who would have to seek a Parliamentary seat in a by-election -- one in which the Conservative party and NDP may choose not to extend leader's courtesy in a tete a tete retaliation for Stephane Dion's ill-fated electoral deal with Elizabeth May -- should be considered especially dim for an individual who just lost his seat in a general election.

For Dominic LeBlanc, the pressure will now be on. With two candidates already in the race, more candidates can be expected to declare soon. It will only get harder for LeBlanc to draw attention to his campaign from here on out. If he doesn't act boldly, and soon, his time in the spotlight could be considered all but finished.

For now, there are only two candidates in the race. Both candidates have an opportunity to build some momentum, but each man will have to work for it.

LeBlanc Is In, McKenna Is Out

First Hat in the Liberal Leadership Ring

If the Liberal leadership were decided right now, at this very moment, the party would have a new leader.

Not Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff or even Frank McKenna. Rather, it would be Dominic LeBlanc, the first Liberal to officially declare his candidacy in the Liberal Leadership contest.

In terms of party renewal, LeBlanc has his share of ideas on what has gone wrong, and how to fix the problem.

“Perhaps, in recent campaigns, we have drifted from that pragmatic centre of Canadian politics and we haven't given some of the traditional Liberal voting blocs an enthusiastic reason to support us," LeBlanc announced.

"I think that the Liberal party needs to return to a pragmatic, centrist approach to policy and to politics," he added. "I think that we need to regain our position as a voice for the middle-class and working Canadians, anglophones and francophones and for younger people."

With LeBlanc declared for the race, one might have expected the campaign to be set to heat up. Not so.

An individual expected to have been a front-runner in the campaign, former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna has decided not to join the contest.

"The challenge of winning the leadership, restoring the health of the Liberal Party and returning a Liberal majority government requires a longer time commitment than I am prepared to make," McKenna announced. "There will be an ample number of well-qualified candidates to do this important work."

Certainly, Rae and Ignatieff -- both expected to declare for the race -- must be breathing a sigh of relief with another potential front runner deciding to forgo an attempt at the leadership.

But as Ujjal Dosanjh and John Manley continue to consider running, each will face significant competition for their respective target demographics, as their potential supporters consider holding out for a better deal from competing camps.

But right now Dominic LeBlanc is the only candidate in the race. Until a few more candidates actually come out and declare, there isn't much to talk about in concrete terms -- the entire Liberal leadership race remains largely hypothetical.

And Another One Bites the Dust

No free ride for Tories as Dion will continue as leader until after convention

It's said that bad things happen in threes. But in the case of Stephane Dion and the Liberal it all depends on perspective.

After being defeated in the third federal election in four years, Stephane Dion has called the third Liberal leadership convention in five years.

"I have informed the president of the Liberal Party of Canada and the president of the national caucus that I will stay as leader until a new leader is chosen at a leadership convention that I have asked to be organized," Dion announced today.

In finally announcing his intentions after nearly a week of silence and reflection, Dion seems poised to neither fully accept nor question the judgment of Canadian voters.

"I still think that if we would have been equipped to explain why I'm fighting for my country, what kind of leader I would have been, what kind of prime minister I would have been and what kind of policy we're proposing, we would have won this election and we would have today a much better government than the one we have," Dion added.

Although he's hardly proven to be a wise leader, or gracious in defeat, Dion seems to have looked to the past for inspiration regarding his decision to continue to serve until replaced. In 1979, Pierre Trudeau resigned as Liberal leader in the wake of an electoral defeat at the hands of the Joe Clark Progressive Conservatives, but left himself available to return in the event of Clark's defeat.

In Trudeau's place, Clark's fall didn't take long to occur. And while he may have asked "the sovereign" to "ask on bended knee three times" before returning, the result speaks for itself. Clark's government was replaced with a Liberal majority.

What all this means is that there will be no free ride for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government. Even if the Liberals aren't fully confident in Dion's ability to contest another election, they need not be hesitant to topple the government if the opportunity should arise.

With Dion -- the principle pillar in the "Red Green alliance" -- having resigned, it isn't at all unfair to continue speculating on the leadership prospects of the Green party's Elizabeth May.

Having hitched both her own and her party's electoral prospects to Dion and the Liberals, May has to face up to the reality that her gambit failed in both of its objectives: defeating the Conservative government and electing Green party MPs.

Many Greens are demanding May's resignation over a last-minute attempt to sway Green party voters to vote strategically against the Conservatives -- but not necessarily in favour of the Greens.

Whether May joins Dion among the ranks of defeated former leaders has yet to be seen.

Clearly the next task for the Liberals will be choosing their next leader. Numerous candidates -- John McCallum, Frank McKenna, John Manley, Ujjal Dosanjh, Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff -- have already started lining up for the job. Others -- Justin Trudeau, Ralph Goodale -- have already sworn off any interest in the coming campaign.

“We must learn quickly from this experience and move on," Dion noted. "The search for a new Liberal leader will be part of a process of renewing our party, but clearly will not in itself be sufficient.”

One way or the other, the coming months will be crucial ones for both Canada and for its official opposition.

For left-wing Canadians, the defeat of Paul Martin's government may not have been such a good thing. Nor would the reelection of the Harper government have been. For Liberals, the ouster of three-time majority winning Jean Chretien turned out to be a bad thing -- as was the selection of his next two successors. For Liberals, Dion's resignation may or may not be a good thing (depending upon the perspective of the individual). But many Conservatives across Canada will be all smiles today.

Stephane Dion has formally bitten the dust.

The Man Who Would Be King

Ujjal Dosanjh wants to be Liberal leader

In the wake of the Liberal party's defeat in the 2008 federal election, one thing is almost certain: the Grits will be searching for a new leader.

And contenders are already lining up to -- in Jack Layton's parlance -- apply for that particular job.

Former Premier of New Brunswick and Ambassador to the United States Frank McKenna has already expressed some interest.

Now, so has Ujjal Dosanjh, the former NDP premier of British Columbia, and the man currently embroiled in a recount in his fiercely-contested riding of Vancouver South.

"I rule out nothing,” Dosanjh replied when asked if he was considering making a run at the Liberal leadership.

In political parlance, that usually means he probably will.

More interestingly still, Dosanjh wants to do so despite speaking no French.

"While I have the utmost respect for the Québécois, people of Quebec, I think that those of us that are immigrants, first-generation immigrants, are already saddled with the burden of having to learn one official language,” Dosanjh noted. “Maybe they can make an exception.”

If Dosanjh were successful in his bid he would be the first unilingual Liberal leader since Lester Pearson.

Dosanjh throwing his hat into the ring would also muddy the waters between the two individuals considered most likely to be the next Liberal leader -- Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae.

Rae, like Dosanjh, a former NDP Premier, would not only face new competition for the party's left-wing base, but would also be deprived of a key supporter. Dosanjh supported Rae, who was formerly the Premier of Ontario, for the Liberal leadership in 2006.

But the Liberal party would face more challenges with Dosanjh as a leader than merely having a non-French speaking leader. They would also have a leader unable to grasp the reasons for the Liberal party's successive electoral defeats, instead contenting himself to blame it all on his former compatriots in the NDP.

"(The) NDP's irrelevant insofar as the federal scene is concerned except insofar as they have the ability by splitting the vote to effectively elect a Conservative government, which they've done twice," Dosanjh wined to CTV.

Seemingly, Dosanjh believes that the Liberal party's failures to convince Canadians they're best suited to govern and their known corruption issues didn't play into the decision at all. This theory that there's nothing wrong with the Liberal party and instead something wrong with everyone else doesn't serve the party well. It prevents it from addressing the internal problems that are making it largely unelectable right now.

Ujjal Dosanjh's leadership would be as much a boon to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives as Dion's continuing leadership.

He can barely win his own riding. One wonders what makes him think he can win the whole country.