Best Team, Best Platform, Best Leader

Amen. And I would add that if we come just short, although I'm still optimistic about the ballot box bonus, as Michiel Horn mentioned in the Globe, the Cons may regret winning this election, if they sleaze it out.

In a minority parliament the other parties can continue the multiple investigations into Con misdeeds - Mulroney/Schreiber, Elections Canada, Listeriosis, Harper-Cadman, etc. (and I fully expect to see Harper charged with perjury, if there's still anything like an independent judicial system), and the Cons are going to wear the recession we're about to suffer - and they're going to wear it even more as they presented a non-platform in the last week of their empty campaign, with 22 of 44 pages pictures of Harper. Canadians will not be happy when they fully wake to the consequences of the hollowness of this non-government. It seemed unlikely there could ever be another majority, but if we are pipped at the post, then we will probably win a huge sweep in a year's time, perhaps the last one. The NDP has indebted itself beyond belief while Layton has made a rod for his back by decrying Libs' voting with the gov't: how can he vote with the Cons on any confidence motion now, especially as NDP rank & file loathe the Cons much more than the leadership resents Libs? Despite depleted resources, he won't be able to resist voting against the Cons on a confidence motion. The Bloc is in the same dilemma, given its rhetoric this campaign and the coming retirement of Duceppe.

Canadians are about to be very very angry about the mess we're going to suffer, and as always happens to governing parties, the Cons are going to be held responsible, should they win. The public is going to look back at the NDP, Greens & Bloc as fools who let the incompetent Cons back in. Suddenly, being the smartest guy in the room, aka. Dion, isn't such a bad thing after all. Gore vs. Bush phenomenon: after having suffered through Bush, everyone wishes they'd voted for Gore.

The worst thing that ever happens to the NDP federally is when they abandon their principles and try to become a demagogic "big" party. They turn off old principled ccf-ers and let tories win and thus, neither advancing any coherent agenda nor gaining any appreciable power, they are exposed as a useless shell of Annex socialist dilettantes. They end up reaping the storm. It was entirely fitting to hear that old fool Broadbent extolling Layton as they were "on the verge of their greatest victory in 20 years". If you're on the left, as I am, 1988 was a disaster & we haven't forgotten the NDP rejected Liberal advances to run a single candidate in various ridings to stop "free trade". 1988 exposed Broadbent's NDP as a self-indulgent, self-regarding joke, leaving Canadians with 5 more years of awful Tory gov't and leading to the almost annihilation of the NDP in 1993. And the huge Liberal majority.

There is only ever space for two big catch-all parties in any political system, one typically a tad to the right and one a tad to the left. The Liberals remain a moderate responsible party while the Cons have moved far to the right. Only the division on the left can prevent a Liberal government. And when the storm comes, May's incoherence, Layton's demagogy & Duceppe's nihilism will seem all the more perverse.

As I say, I think we still have a decent chance to squeak this out, and I hope we do, so Canadians can get some decent government. It will be bad for all of us to suffer another year of Con misrule. But should it come to pass, the only silver lining is it will pave the way for a huge Liberal majority, which would otherwise be very difficult to achieve in this divided political landscape. If that should happen, I strongly suggest we adopt Dion's suggestion and introduce preferential voting while undoing some excessively restrictive provisions re. party financing. The aging boomers make an increasingly powerful conservative plurality a real enduring possibility for a generation, given our current electoral system. If the majority of more moderate Canadians, from centre-right to centre-left & beyond, want to ensure they have a government that reflects them, then a preferential voting system should ensure that, introducing an element of proportionality into the system as well as being easy to implement: the ridings & ballots can remain identical, just instead of a single X one could number the candidates/parties in their corresponding circles from 1 onwards. It may prevent any further outright majorities but it would also better reflect the popular will, encourage a more civilised discourse, and an enduring Liberal government, with various coalition partners coming & going.

I differ with Dion over the proper degree of involvement of the Federal Gov't in the nation's affairs, leaning more towards Trudeau's robust view than his more classically Bourassa-PLQ inclinations. But that said, on pretty much everything else he is strikingly, almost irritatingly, right. He has changed my mind about various issues because he has really analysed them more deeply than most. He was and remains the right leader at the right time. Whatever happens in Ontario, the Liberals will once again be the leading federalist party in QC. Only Dion, with his appeal to hard-core federalists & his debating skills, could have ensured that - winning back QC will be a long campaign, but it always had to start with the real federalists, as the soft nationalists & separatists were always going to be impossible to reach this time around, after the sponsorship thing & facing three parties fighting for that vote. And he achieved this despite the enormous bias against him in the media, in QC & outside. The Liberal Party's very raison d'être is to be the bridge from French to English and across all regions and so to bind Canada together, to keep this nation strong. The essential first step was to reclaim our place in QC. We will also be the often forgotten & betrayed Maritimers' champions. And we will present the majority of urban Canadians, especially those in our biggest most vibrant & productive metropolises.

We are well placed for the future, win or lose, except for the financing provisions. We have a strong base and a great brand. The LPC will have to continue to evolve, and Dion will have to push on with the work he & Kennedy & Hall-Findlay started, to make it ever-more responsive to its members and in return, get its members more willing to contribute their money as well as their ideas & energy. But we have seen in this campaign, as Dion has led us back from the brink, that on an even playing field ($18 mil max for all parties), we remain a ferocious power. This is part of the reason I'm in favour of another election asap, if we should just miss out this time. Tired as we all are, and poor as we'll be, the longer we let the Cons spend their money smearing us outside election-time, the steeper the slope we have to climb when the election happens. Better to get a loan, if need be, and fight them when they are being condemned for their criminality, sleaze & mismanagement, rather than wait. A year's time should do. Diefenbaker's 1957 & 1958 elections should be our model. And as a Montrealer, let me use Cohen: first we take QC & the Maritimes, then we take Ontario, BC & the Prairies.

No-one else could have reconciled old warring factions as well as Dion. No-one else would have been as self-confident in giving such prominent roles to former rivals. No-one else could have endorsed & advanced such a revolutionary agenda of modernisation for the old established institution that is the LPC. No-one else could have foreseen the great issues of today & tomorrow and so eloquently synthesised them into a coherent whole: a richer, greener, fairer Canada indeed!

We have the best team & the best plan. And if we have them, it's not by accident: we have the best leader. Having finally, after 40 years, reconciled & united the party, win or lose, let's have the maturity & foresight to hang on & finish the job of building a better LPC so we can build a better Canada.

Allez les rouges!