After you Alfonse
I’m told the mood was anxious and a bit tense at the Liberal caucus meeting that followed the throne speech until (as I learned shortly after 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning) that Stephane Dion indicated he had heard their concerns about triggering an election by opposing the Throne speech. They were concerned for three good reasons:
1) The Liberals are in disarray and are not convinced that Dion is the leader who can lead them back to power.
2) They knew the party responsible for triggering the election would be blamed by Canadians who don’t want one.
3) There wasn’t a ballot question contained in the Throne speech over which an election would be fought.
All of the other parties, however, seem anxious for an election, they just don’t want to be tagged as the irresponsible ones who triggered it. So what we got this week was a dramatic game of political chicken that if nothing else was fun to watch and to talk about.
My sense is the short-term winner might well be Dion because he chose to listen to his caucus. He listened, rather than hold to a conviction that many thought would be to fight an election on the environment, by bringing the government down for indicating it wouldn’t be able to meet Kyoto commitments and for wanting to keep the date of withdrawal from Afghanistan open for discussion.
Listening to your caucus can be a good thing and can save a lot of grief. Just ask John Tory.