September 19, 2007
Going, going, gone
By LICIA CORBELLA
Stephane Dion and Stockwell Day have a lot more in common than their initials.
Both had remarkably short honeymoon periods following exciting leadership conventions that put them at the helm of their respective parties.
Both were very quickly recognized as terrible mistakes by party insiders and had knives out against their leadership (or lack thereof) within a year. And both, to varying degrees, deserved it.
Liberals were circling the wagons yesterday trying to quell any outward signs of division following the disastrous shutout results for the Liberals in the three federal byelections in Quebec on Monday.
But at least one Liberal insider admitted off the record that the divisions are there and are approaching the depth and breadth of the Grand Canyon -- much in the same way they appeared very suddenly and precipitously against Day following his disastrous performance in the November 2000 general election, craftily called by then Liberal PM Jean Chretien just weeks after Day won a seat in the House of Commons in a byelection.
The grumbling against Dion started shortly after he came to power, too. When asked by pollsters who would make the best PM, Dion's numbers usually hover around 15%. And now there is Monday night.
The stunning Liberal loss in the long-time Liberal stronghold of Outremont in Montreal to the NDP is the equivalent of the Conservatives losing a byelection in Calgary-Southeast. This is only the second time since 1935 that the Liberals have lost that riding and it wasn't even close.
NDP candidate, Thomas Mulcair, a popular former Quebec provincial Liberal cabinet minister, beat Liberal candidate Jocelyn Coulon by 20 percentage points.
Instead of running Justin Trudeau in that once believed "safe seat," which he likely would have won, Dion wanted to hand an electoral gift to his close friend, Coulon, another unexciting academic, just like Dion.
Handpicking his buddy is what Dion will be most questioned over behind closed doors with his increasingly mutinous caucus.
To add insult to his considerable injury, Dion personally visited the riding, where he went to school and lives next door to, seven times to help his hand-picked, clone-like friend.
Not choosing Trudeau is perceived by many Liberals as pure vindictiveness by Dion, owing to Trudeau's support of Gerard Kennedy in the leadership race. Others, however, say it's just another example of poor decision making.
And Dion makes bad policy and political decisions all the time. Indeed, giving a speech and holding a media scrum in Outremont following the loss shows that Dion either has no political sense, very bad advisers or both.
Mike Duffy of CTV said, it looked like Dion had been crying when he came out in front of the cameras. That's politically nuts.
The Conservative's decisive win in Roberval-Lac-St-Jean by Denis Lebel with a whopping 59.4% of the vote, beating out the Bloc candidate by almost 10,000 votes and more than 32% was made even more significant by the Liberals pulling in just 9.6% of the vote.
In St-Hyacinthe-Bagot, a riding in the dead centre of the Bloc Quebecois heartland, the Conservative candidate was less than 1,500 votes behind the Bloc winner, who won with 42% of the vote to the Tory's 37.5% of the vote. The Liberal candidate came in fourth with just 7.4% of the vote. In the last federal election in that riding, the Conservatives lost by more than 15,000 votes.
All of this indicates that a new political dynamic has been born in Canada -- one where the Tories are the new federalist option in Quebec.
Like Day, Dion's days as leader are numbered. Loyal Liberals will see to it.
