Dion Doesn't Feel Like It

Freshly New-Born Liberal Leader Stephane Dion is not prepared to topple the Harper Tories afterall. Apparently Canadians don't want an election "...in the middle of winter..." We are left to speculate if Santa personally told Dion that Canadians did not like winter elections or whether this has some sort of sound reasoning, or even if it's just that the Liberal Party organizationally would prefer an election when it wasn't fresh out of a convention.

The Bloc argued that Afghanistan was such a pressing issue that an election was necessary if things didn't change. And by changing the Bloc demanded Canada take less of an active role in the fighting and more of a re-construction role. "Build bridges not corpses," I guess is the Bloc motto when it comes to foreign conflicts and peacekeeping.

Dion could have argued from a principled perspective, as Harper has been, that playing politics with soldiers isn't appropriate. There is legitimate room for debate on the issue of Afghanistan. However, the house was given the opportunity to vote on the measure. For the Liberals it was a free vote would you believe.

Given that the house previously voted to extend the mission, it seems very much like the Bloc is merely using this issue in a game of political lacrosse. Otherwise it would await the two year expiration date to renew its objections. Or it would provide some sort of rationale for why such drastic measures are needed now. In the absence of such reasons we are forced to conclude that the Bloc is looking more to the polls in Quebec, than they are thinking about what is best for Canada... And yes a separatist party thinking of what's best for Canada is possible although perhaps rare.

We should give Dion the benefit of the doubt here however. It may be that he had given good reasons for making the choice he has. The media hardly ever does a perfect job at reporting these things.

But in the absence of any other comments being reported, I'm forced to conclude that Dion won't bring down the government, because he doesn't want to.

Two year olds could provide better reasons than that.